


goldmine / landmine

by erebones



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blow Jobs, Breakfast in Bed, Coming Out, Cooking, Current Events, Domestic Fluff, Flashbacks, Friends to Lovers, Love Confessions, M/M, Masturbation, Penis In Vagina Sex, Pining, Sharing a Bed, Trans Claude von Riegan, Trans Male Character, Unrequited Love, background hilmari, quarantine fic, referenced lorenz/sylvain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:08:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24240328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones
Summary: When Lorenz invites Claude to live with him during quarantine, his longstanding affections for his best friend reassert themselves despite his best efforts to keep them under lock and key. Is it worth it to come clean, or will the truth hurt more than it helps?
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 29
Kudos: 174





	goldmine / landmine

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a fic about Lorenz cutting Claude's hair for him, and it sort of spiraled, inspired by a few cute relationship reddit threads that were floating around in the early days of quarantine, and also watching the first half of julie and julia as i was starting. Claude is trans man, and I don't reference his bits with any specific language. 
> 
> I decided to make Claude a professor (like my aunt, he primarily teaches Asian history; references to his teaching material were pulled from her courseload this spring), and Lorenz does something in the fashion/philanthropy sphere, which I don't really know enough about to elaborate on. 
> 
> hope everyone is well <3
> 
> EDIT: now with [art](https://twitter.com/foundati0ns/status/1264302596518563848?s=20) by the fantastic olly/@foundati0ns on twitter!

_We like things related to our survival: soup, arrows—_

_they expand the range of the species. Goldmine,_

_goldmine, landmine._

Landscape with Several Small Fires - Richard Siken

* * *

He lives alone in a funny little place in an odd corner of Queens, where the windows sit just slightly askew in their sills and have to be taped over in the winter, and where the kitchen is small and cramped; but it doesn’t matter, because he eats at work half the time anyway and orders in the rest of the week, eats it on the couch with the TV cold and flickering. Well, he used to. Now he no longer lives alone. Now the kitchen, with its ugly orange and black tile, the grout peeling back at the edge of the sink, is seeing more use than it ever has in the one point three years Lorenz has lived here. (Alone. But not anymore.)

“Are you sure?” Claude said, the day Lorenz offered. His voice was subdued over the phone. Somber, almost, as though he’d just come from a funeral. Lorenz knew it intimately—it was the same bleak pall that hung over his own life like a shroud, a subtle weight that seemed to be slowly choking the air from his lungs without his knowing about it.

“Quite sure,” he said, more robustly than he felt. “Like you said, it’s not safe, with your grandfather’s health the way it is.”

“I know, but I could… I could find a place to rent around here, maybe, or see if Hil and Mari can spare a third—”

“Nonsense. I have the room. It’s not a palace by any means, but it’s comfortable. And I’m sure you’d feel better not staying with your grandfather. Just for now.”

 _Just for now_. That’s what he keeps telling himself, even when Claude turns up the next day with a suitcase and an apologetic smile crinkling its welcome at the edges of his eyes. The door shuts behind him and he tugs off his mask and pulls Lorenz into a hug.

“Thanks for doing this,” he says, quiet and sincere. His voice tickles Lorenz’s ear, and his stubble tickles the curve of his neck. Warmth spills down Lorenz’s chest like he’s slopped tea all over himself, and when he pulls back he’s sure he’s blushing.

“Of course. It’s my pleasure.”

Lorenz has always lived alone, ever since he graduated college and was finally able, through many late nights and long hours and the dregs of his penny-pinching father’s inheritance money, to start his own business. This is the first apartment he’s truly been able to call his own, and truthfully he’s a little attached to it. The tin ceilings, the exposed brick here and there, the wooden floors that ripple just a little underfoot with age. Perhaps it’s a bit dated in places, but there’s a handkerchief-sized back yard, and a little attic loft where he keeps his stupidly luxurious queen bed, and it’s his.

Well. His and Claude’s.

Twelve hundred square feet is nothing to sneeze at, but for two grown men who are each accustomed to their own space, their own generous elbow room, it’s… a bit of a tight fit. The lack of a guest room in particular strikes an unusual chord between them in the first few days. Lorenz, of course, offers to concede his loft for the time being. Claude declines. Says the couch will be fine.

The couch is not fine.

So they adapt. After all, it’s not as though Lorenz uses _all_ of his bed when he sleeps. He isn’t a sprawler, or a snorer, or a kicker—he’s tidy. Efficient. _Methodical_. That’s what Claude says, when he’s sitting upright against the pillow on the left-hand side of the mattress, watching Lorenz pop out his contacts and pat his face with a bit of rosewater he keeps by the side of the bed.

“I have my little rituals,” Lorenz says, unsure if he’s being made fun of.

“That’s good.” Claude scratches an eyebrow. He’d showered before coming up the stairs—more of a glorified ladder, really—and he smells of spicy soap and toothpaste, a detail Lorenz notices as he tucks his house slippers under the edge of the bed and swings his legs under the covers. “Routine is supposed to be good for you. Us. Nowadays, I mean. That’s what the experts say.”

“Do they.” Lorenz can’t help but be charmed by his stammering. Is he _nervous_? That makes two of them.

It’s only the second night. They’ve been friends for a good long while, even shared a dorm in school, but they haven’t lived near one another in almost four years. After graduation Claude had moved upstate—far, far upstate, so far they called it the _Northcountry_ as though they were some sort of Viking horde sheltering against the cruel winters—to claw his way toward tenure and care for his aging grandfather, while Lorenz remained in Manhattan to launch his business. They’ve kept in contact decently well since then, but the sudden shift from six hours apart to six seconds is a bit of a shocking leap. Especially considering the last time they were in the same room, it was… awkward.

“Do you have enough space?” Lorenz asks courteously, to avoid thinking about it. Inwardly he kicks himself for his stupid, formal manner—he wants Claude to feel at _home_ here, rather than a guest—but Claude either doesn’t notice, or is too polite to mention it.

“I do, thanks. Are you sure you don’t mind…?”

“Claude. We’ve been through this.”

“I suppose we have.” The reticent tone lasts only a moment before fading in favor of a smile. “I’ve never been told I snore, but if I do, feel free to kick me.”

“If you insist,” Lorenz says doubtfully. He wiggles down the sheets until his back is flat on the mattress and the covers are to his chin. Already it’s a touch too warm to be so bundled up—Claude is putting out heat like a furnace—but every movement seems magnified, and he’s afraid to shift around too much and disturb his bedmate.

Claude plugs his phone in and turns the light off without fuss. Lays back. Lorenz stares at the ceiling and tries to breathe silently through his mouth.

 _This is stupid_ , he thinks, cursing his iron-rod limbs. In a moment of panicked honesty he blurts out, “I haven’t slept with anyone in a while.”

Claude shifts a little—Lorenz dares not turn his head to see if he’s looking at him through the orange-stained dark. “Don’t worry,” he says, soft as anything. “I’ll be gentle.”

A beat passes and Lorenz scoffs, elbowing him sharply in the side. “ _Claude_.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Claude laughs, though he hardly sounds sorry at all. But the ribald joke, and the giddy, snickering laughter that follows, does a lot to calm Lorenz’s trussed-up nerves.

Even so, that first (second) night isn’t precisely restful. Lorenz rockets awake every time Claude so much as stirs in his sleep, heart racing and body strangely warm and humid beneath the covers. He tells himself it’s because he isn't accustomed to sleeping alone. That it has nothing to do with the silly, childish sentiments he’d harbored for Claude a few years ago. It’s been such a long time. He was hardly more than a boy. Idealistic, riding the high of cutting ties with his father and his heterosexuality in one fell swoop. Of course he would fall into the best friend crush cliche. It was normal. Embarrassing, but fleeting. What they have now is far more stable and reliable, and he wouldn’t trade it for anything.

He repeats these truths over and over to himself as the hours drag by in fits and starts, and by the time morning dawns to an empty bed and the sound of the coffee pot burbling downstairs, he almost believes them.

He falls back to sleep for another hour and when he blinks awake at nine-thirty, he can hear Claude’s gentle, warm-brick-oven voice filtering up from where he sits at the table, framed by the archway to the kitchen and the framed print of Caballero’s _Nu masclin_ hanging on the wall. Lorenz curls up on his side and listens for a minute. He’s lecturing, rather informally from the sound of it, pausing every now and then to answer a question. He’s trying to be quiet. Lorenz yawns and stretches and rolls over, heavy-eyed. His face lands in Claude’s pillow, and the smell of his hair and skin in Lorenz’s nose feels like a punch to the gut.

 _Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck_.

But laying there feeling sorry for himself won’t make things magically better, so he forces himself out of bed and tiptoes down the stairs to wash the restless night away in the shower. Two days down. Who knows how many left to go.

The next night is a little better, partly because Lorenz is so dog-tired from the night before, and partly because he mentally prepared for it. He pops a melatonin pill with his evening cuppa and goes right to sleep, hardly even noticing Claude’s weight on the other side of the mattress.

He only wakes once in the middle of the night, groggy and confused. Claude is on his back, has somehow shoved the pillow straight up against the headboard, and is snoring very gently with his mouth agape. Lorenz turns on his side, facing him. He means to wake him. Give him a bit of a shake. But instead he watches him in sleep-drunk fascination, barely visible in the citrine glow filtering in through the edges of the light-blocking curtains, and somewhere between one snore and the next he drops back into sleep as easily as blinking.

As the days tick by to form a week, a routine begins to manifest around them like a cocoon. Claude quickly establishes a very strictly regimented schedule that Lorenz, accustomed to the amorphous, boundaryless lifestyle of a self-employed entrepreneur, is rather in awe of.

He wakes without an alarm between six and six-fifteen every day, does some gentle yoga in the narrow space leftover between the couch and the television, then eats some variation of granola/fruit/plant milk from a bowl still sitting on the floor. No TV on, no radio, nothing on his phone. Just the dull gray quiet of early morning, a concrete springtime.

Then he brews a cup of coffee and sits at the kitchen table to prepare for his first lecture. Lorenz tends to wander in around this time, yawning and dragging his hair into a ponytail, to find breakfast waiting for him. Eggs, usually, with toast and maybe some vegetables softened with butter in the pan. He isn’t usually a breakfast person. _Hadn’t_ been, that is, until Claude.

(At first Claude made coffee for Lorenz, too. Lorenz smiled politely, thanked him, and let it go surreptitiously cold at his elbow as he trawled through his email inbox, unable to say _no thank you_ and equally unable to just get up and pour it down the sink and make himself some tea.

On the third day, Claude found his whisk and bowl and tea tin in the cupboard to the left of the sink, and quietly left him to his own little ritual. An agreed-upon demarcation like territories drawn up on a map.)

Lorenz’s own work requires a little less scheduling, and he feels rather like a jellyfish at first, floating in the blue-black void of the ocean with nothing but the structure of regular meals keeping him tethered to reality. He checks his emails a lot. Too often. He sits across the table from Claude initially, tempted into pretending to feel even a smidgeon of motivation—and he _should_ , his brain clamors at him with guilt trips the size of baseball bats, goading him into the menial slog of rearranging his entire business to function remotely. His handful of staff are small but mighty, and he’s determined to make sure they can continue to work and be paid their usual salary. Even still, after the initial scramble to get everything set up, he finds himself drifting through the morning on the dregs of his matcha, lulled into distraction by the non-passage of time.

He is saved from total mental atrophy by the arrival of lunch, which is also a Claude-driven affair. Lorenz would have been content to make some kind of drab sandwich with cold cuts and mayonnaise, day after day after day—that is, when he finally remembered himself enough to feel hungry. But Claude, somehow, will get up from the table after his eleven o’clock lecture, which Lorenz has assured him that he doesn’t mind listening to (he doesn’t; Claude has a nice voice generally, but his “teaching” voice is downright _velvety_ ), and head for the kitchen. He’ll make “just a little something light,” like slabs of ciabatta bread pan-toasted in butter and piled with cherry tomatoes and finely-minced red onion, or ramen bricks dressed up with bok choy and soft-boiled eggs and broth warmed out of a carton instead of a foil packet.

He would feel guilty about Claude essentially keeping him fed and watered like goddamn horse every day, but they _do_ split the grocery bill, and Lorenz maintains a biweekly order-in schedule where they rotate through their preferred local restaurants and take turns picking. (Claude’s favorite so far is the Mexican place down the street where he orders burritos the size of his head and always comes back with an extra bag of chips and several little plastic take-out pots of extra guac, on the house. Lorenz, when pressed, enjoys sushi, and when left unattended will return with several styrofoam cartons stuffed with rolls and a vaguely guilty expression.)

The first week moves around them like a dream, dancers around stage dressings that hardly seem to move. Lorenz spends most afternoons on the phone, sorting out remote schedules for his employees, figuring out supply chains, filing for a grant to make sure his people have what they need to work from home. He starts to feel more awake as the clock ticks toward dinner time, and as soon as five o’clock rolls around he scrambles to tie up loose ends and bid farewell to whichever agent or marketing manager he has on the phone as Claude wraps up his afternoon lecture and retreats once more to the kitchen.

“I’m sorry it’s not much,” Lorenz says in the middle of the first week. He’s leaning against the arched frame of the doorway into the kitchen, hands fiddling uselessly in empty pockets, watching as Claude kneads together a soft flatbread on the square foot of counter space between the sink and the coffee station.

“What do you mean? It’s great.”

Lorenz tries not to audibly scoff. “I’m sure it’s not what you’re used to. I’ve seen your grandfather’s kitchen.”

Claude half-glances over his shoulder and sudden dread pools in the pit of Lorenz’s stomach. But he only shrugs and says, “It’s more than enough for me. Do you have a rolling pin?”

“A… er, no. I’m afraid not.”

“No worries. I’ll just do it by hand.” His left sleeve is slipping down his forearm—as Lorenz watches, he pushes it back up to the elbow, leaving a streak of powdery white flour behind on the warm brown of his skin, the dark curls of his arm hair. “...me the flour?”

Lorenz takes a deep breath and sees spots for a moment. “Sorry, what?”

“I asked if you could pass me the flour. Just so I can grab another handful.” Claude turns fully to look at him, hip propped against the cupboard. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Lorenz says. He can’t feel his teeth. Should he be able to feel his teeth? He thinks of Claude’s broad hands dusted in flour, lips berry-bright, curls outlined against a sky so blue he wasn’t sure they’d invented a name for it yet. He walks across the kitchen, all three feet of it, and holds out the jar of flour for him to scoop from.

They eat dinner on the couch, flatbread and curry and rice, watching some dumb rerun that Lorenz doesn’t pay attention to, too busy trying to breathe around the weight of Claude’s toes wedged under his thigh for warmth.

* * *

_three years ago_

The night is cool but the water is warm where it laps against the side of the dock and around Lorenz’s ankles. It’s late, late enough that only a few cabin lights are still on around the border of the lake. Overhead the sky is vast and blue-black and sprinkled with stars. The summer fireflies are out in force in the tall reeds at the edge of the water; so are the mosquitos, which is why they tore off their shirts and went swimming in their underwear at nearly one in the morning. But it’s worth it now for the cool air on his skin, the taste of his heart in his throat, the bare wood rough against his sunburnt shoulders as he watches another point of light streak across the sky and disappear.

“’Nother one,” Claude whispers.

“I saw it.”

They’d been loud in the water earlier. Splashing each other and laughing like idiot teenagers instead of the young men they are. Lorenz’s foot touched something slimy at the bottom and he screamed, and Claude laughed until he swallowed water.

Now it is quiet. Lorenz’s mouth is dry and tastes of lakewater, and his palms are damp with sweat. He almost feels like if he breathed out through his mouth it would come out in a cloud, humid and damp against the cool night. Another streak of light, and another right on its heels. He gasps and Claude laughs softly next to him, their shoulders just brushing.

Lorenz feels like his heart is going to burst.

“Claude,” he says, or someone says it in his own voice. He shivers on the precipice.

“Yeah?”

He swallows nothing, shivers naked in the night. “I’m. I’ve been wanting to tell you something. Important.”

Claude is quiet a moment. Then: “All right.” Then: the blazing warmth of a hand gripping his own. Overhead, the stars, falling faster and faster now as the Pleiades envelop them in their fragile silver-threaded grasp.

Lorenz’s breath hitches in his chest. “I’m gay.”

Water laps softly against the dock. “Oh,” Claude says. Somehow that single syllable is infused with such warmth and gratitude it makes Lorenz’s eyes sting. “Hey. That’s awesome.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, of course. Thank you for telling me.” A gentle squeeze. Claude doesn’t let go of his hand. “How long have you known?”

“Like, for sure? Um. A few weeks, I suppose.” His heart is still slamming into his ribs, even though the worst is over, the most terrifying beast defeated. He thinks of toasted marshmallow sticking to his lips, to Claude’s fingers. Of hot cocoa out of tin mugs, wet leaves underfoot. The sharp stinging lemon-smell of the greasy bug repellant Claude massaged into the back of his neck like sweet oil. “I mean I’ve been… mulling. For a while. But it really only started to take shape… this summer. I guess.”

“So recently?” Claude sounds surprised.

“It might have taken me longer,” Lorenz admits, “but let’s just say I… had a little help.”

“Oh yeah?”

Lorenz turns his head against the damp wood. Claude is looking at him, hands still entwined, expression inscrutable in the dark. But the warmth of his tone gives Lorenz hope. He leans up on one elbow, the fulcrum of his own hubris. In future days, weeks, months, years, he’ll look back on this moment with a bitter twist of hatred for his shortsightedness, his boyish naivete; but in this moment he’s only filled with the golden light of victory.

Claude’s eyes gleam up at him like polished gems reflecting the Milky Way, lips parted on an inhale. Perhaps he means to say something—but they’ll never know for sure. Lorenz leans down, damp hair pooling on the dock, and kisses him.

His lips are chapped and warm. Soft. They purse back for a fleeting instant before there’s a hand on his shoulder. Lorenz breaks away, trembling.

“Lorenz,” Claude begins, and his voice is all wrong now—not at all the rough-edged delight from before, but a torn and shredded thing, like a strip of damp newspaper twisted up so tight it’s flint-tipped to the touch. “Hang on, just… you’re getting away from me.”

“What do you mean.” Lorenz licks his lips and tastes lakewater. The universe wasn’t even kind enough to give him a scrap of Claude’s mouth, the slightest sweetness of lip balm or the tang of spearmint gum.

“You’ve only just figured out you’re gay, I’m not… listen, it’s a long process, okay? I get it. I’ve been there. I’ve had little crushes on friends too, it doesn’t necessarily mean—”

He keeps talking, but Lorenz’s ears are ringing too hard to understand him. Is this really happening? Is he really being told that the summer sweetness they built together, late nights and smoky fires and watering holes and wildflowers, was all just a silly boy’s daydream?

Lorenz gets to his feet. He’s shaking so hard he can barely walk straight, but he manages to get to the end of the dock before Claude catches up to him, grabbing briefly for his elbow before Lorenz shakes him off. He feels like he’s burning up from the inside, hot poisonous fumes of shame choking around his lungs as he refuses to pause for Claude’s pursuit.

“Lorenz, please. Don’t be angry with me. I just don’t want you to waste your time—”

“Waste my _time_? Is that what I’ve been doing these last four weeks, then?”

“ _Lorenz_.” He sounds—and looks, now that they’re within range of the porch light—distraught, almost grievous enough for Lorenz to feel sorry for him. Lorenz bangs open the screen door but comes to a halt just inside, waiting. Listening. Claude leans against the frame and says, so gently in hurts: “You’ve got a whole life ahead of you, Lor. A life, a career, a million people who will move in and out of your life, and at some point one of them is going to stick. You think you know everything, have seen everything, but you don’t even know… You don’t know what’s around the corner. It could be anything, it could be any _one_. Don’t you want to give them that chance, instead of thinking you’ve already met him, and are just waiting for him to come to his senses and leave for the big city to be with you?”

Lorenz shuts his eyes. The dry prickle gives way to heat as tears well up and spill down his cheeks unchecked. “I know what I feel,” he bites out before his voice is strangled, too. “I’m sorry it’s so terribly inconvenient for you.”

This time Claude doesn’t give chase when he storms through the house for the guest room. Shivering with cold and damp and fury, he strips out of his wet boxers and stands under the hot shower in the dark and cries.

 _But I love you_ , he thinks, over and over. _But I love you. I love you. I love you._

When he comes out, Claude is sitting at the end of the twin-sized bed in his pajamas, hair still wet from a shower. He looks sad, and tired, and when he pats the mattress in supplication, Lorenz sees no other option but to sit down next to him and lay his head on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Claude whispers. He extends his hand, and after a beat of suspicion, Lorenz puts his own into it. “I’m… I’m flattered, truly. I’m in awe.”

“Don’t mock me,” Lorenz chokes into his sleeve.

“I’m not. I swear I’m not. You’re my best friend, Lor. That’s never gonna change.”

Lorenz squeezes his eyes shut, but a traitorous tear still leaks out, soaking into Claude’s pajama shirt. No dignity remaining, he allows himself a small sniffle. “Thank goodness for that,” he says, and the sound of Claude’s soft huffing laughter is like a knife tearing the last of his heart to shreds.

“I mean it. But don’t you see, we’re going in different directions. We may be in the same state, but we’ll be hours apart, doing such wildly different things. You deserve someone who can be there for you, in person, whenever you need him. These next few years, they’re gonna be tough for me. I wouldn’t be able to give you the attention you need. I won’t be able to get in a car any old time and—”

“Claude,” Lorenz says, in a stuffed-up, watery voice. “Please don’t… justify it anymore. Not right now.”

Claude’s thumb strokes the back of his hand. “Okay.” Another regretful beat. “I’m sorry.”

“You said that already,” Lorenz tells him, but the words get lost somewhere as Claude pulls him into a hug and holds him til he’s wrung completely dry.

* * *

_now_

The second week, Claude returns from checking the mail downstairs with an enormous cardboard box that he opens to reveal a _tree_.

“A miniature tree,” he insists, even though the thing stands nearly three feet tall once the branches have been stood up straight. The leaves are bright green and glossy, and take up most of Lorenz’s only south-facing window.

“What is it _for_ ,” Lorenz asks, and the answer—a lemon tree—does little to comfort him, especially considering there are no lemons to be seen.

“ _Yet_ ,” Claude tells him. “No lemons to be seen _yet_.”

“It’s going to die in front of that window,” Lorenz warns. He’s tried everything: balling up socks in the windowsill, taping plastic over it, hanging a blanket over it to block out the chill. Still it persists.

“It’s almost April. It’ll be fine.”

Lorenz has his doubts, after many failed attempts of his own with various succulents and “easy-care” indoor plants, but Claude remains optimistic. He goes on a fifteen minute tangent during both of his lectures concerning the care and keeping of potted lemon trees, which Lorenz listens to with varying degrees of amusement, observing his animated gestures from the other side of the table.

He’s so excited about that stupid tree. Lorenz can’t even bring himself to mind that it’s blocking half the light they get in a day.

It helps that it’s starting to get warm. April is almost upon them, and the back garden—a generous term, but Lorenz is sticking to it—is a little pocket of sunshine when the square footage of the living room grows close and stifling. Halfway through the second week the temperature climbs past sixty, and Lorenz takes the opportunity to unearth a rake and some pruning shears to wile the winter’s deadfall back into shape.

“Do you need help?” Claude calls out the second storey window. It’s a Thursday, so he only had the one morning lecture, and when he traded his nice professorial gingham buttondown for a baggy tee shirt that’s just a little too short in the hem, Lorenz made his escape.

“I’m fine!” he shouts back, even though his back is starting to ache and his hair keeps trying to escape the loose knot he’d put it in. He sits back on his heels and groans, trying to shake out his shoulders. “What’s for lunch?”

“It’s a surprise,” Claude shoots back. “It’s ready whenever you are.”

Lorenz heaves a sigh and looks down at his herb bed. The mint he’d foolishly planted the first year has continued to take over the whole back corner of the yard season after season; already it’s sending its pale green suckers scrambling in every direction, and they’ve barely passed the threat of frost. He’d hoped to cut it off at the pass, but at this rate he’s tempted to tear the whole thing up and confine it to a pot just to keep it contained.

Sweaty and mildly irate, Lorenz plunks his trowel point-first into the dirt for later and climbs to his feet.

His apartment is above a chiropractor’s office which, from the state of the mail piling up by the inside door, is temporarily closed due to the pandemic. He gives the small mound a poke with his toe to keep it from spilling out over his own doorstep and shoulders his way upstairs, wiping sweat from his forehead.

He opens the door to a waft of cool air and sighs in relief. Claude had apparently gone digging and found his dusty window fan, which is now cleaned and humming gently in the window Claude had been yelling out of a few minutes ago. The man himself is in the kitchen, heard but not seen from where Lorenz stands, whistling the Team Rocket theme song through his teeth as he washes his hands.

Lorenz shuts his eyes and lets himself daydream for a moment. Imagines coming back upstairs with his arms full of mint and basil and cilantro for the kitchen. Claude waiting for him with an ice-cold cocktail and a smile.

A whole garden full of lemon trees.

“Lorenz, that you? I’ve got iced tea here if you want it. Christ, wash your hands first, look at you—”

The vision pops like a soap bubble and Lorenz blinks it away, suddenly mindful of how unpresentable he is. “I’ll just—hop in the shower,” he stammers. His eyes slide away from Claude’s honey-warm smile and he makes his escape before he can say or do something truly foolish.

He’s feeling more like himself after a quick rinse and change, and Claude is waiting for him with a cold shrimp salad and the aforementioned iced tea. His smile is a little dimmer, and conversation is stilted, but what is there to talk about? The news is depressing. They spend every waking moment in the same thousand or so square feet. They spend the night shoulder to shoulder, they even hear one another’s work conversations and conference calls. There is nothing happening in their lives that is a mystery.

Lorenz thanks him for lunch and returns to the garden until it gets dark, trying to chase that claustrophobic feeling out of his lungs.

When he returns to the apartment, Claude is out—picking up dinner, says the note scribbled on the upstairs door, the mask missing from its hook next to Lorenz’s keys. He showers again, more thoroughly this time, and crawls onto the couch with limbs that feel like lead.

He wakes up to a dark room. A blanket has been draped over him, keeping him warm against the thermostat dropping down to sixty, and he can see a faint blue glow against the ceiling—Claude must be in bed already, still on his phone. Lorenz sits up and grimaces. Every inch of his body complains at being bent over in the dirt, pulling weeds and raking up sticks and trash. He almost wonders if it’s worth it to drag himself up the stairs to bed. But it’s too cold to sleep down here, so he puppeteers himself through brushing his teeth and washing his face, and by the time he creeps up to the loft, Claude’s phone is off on the bedside stand and Claude himself appears to be asleep.

Feeling safe, Lorenz strips at the foot of the bed and tugs on a clean sweatshirt. It’s a bit oversized and well-worn, roomy enough that it falls past his crotch, hiding his boxer briefs from view. He tugs them down a little, sleepily resituates his junk, and crawls into bed.

“Hey Lorenz?” Claude says.

Lorenz yelps and nearly jumps out of bed again. “Fuck! I thought you were asleep!”

“Sorry, sorry!” Claude whispers, half-laughing. “Don’t worry, my night vision is shit.”

“Hmph.” Lorenz puts his glasses definitively on the bedside stand and pulls the covers up to his chin. “What is it?”

“I wanted to… I was wondering if we could talk. If you’re not too tired.”

Lorenz suddenly can’t feel the tips of his fingers. He curls them into the ends of his too-long sleeves and stares at the ceiling without really seeing it. “What about?”

“I just wanted to… check in. You seemed a little off today. Are you sure you’re still okay with me… being here?”

“Of course I’m okay with it,” Lorenz says, baffled. “I suppose I’ve just been a bit stir-crazy, that’s all.”

“And there’s not still any, um, hard feelings?”

Lorenz doesn’t dare breathe. “About what.”

“About… you know. A few years ago.”

“I assure you, there are no hard feelings. I wouldn’t have invited you to stay with me otherwise.” Lorenz knows he’s talking like a robot, but he doesn’t know how to stop it. He swallows, and the click of his throat is audible in the dark. “Are you… I hope I haven’t made you uncomfortable? It wasn’t my intention—”

“No, no, nothing like that! I wanted to make sure that _I_ wasn’t making _you_ uncomfortable.”

Lorenz opens his mouth to say _you’re not, of course, don’t be ridiculous_ , but nothing comes out. He shuts his mouth again and tries to breathe against the weight on his chest like a sleep paralysis demon waiting to eat his face. _Charming._

“I am,” Claude says after a moment. He sounds terribly sad. “Aren’t I.”

“No!” Lorenz hastens to say, but it rings false. “I’m sorry, it’s just the close quarters and the… the state of the world, I suppose, it’s… it’s weighing on me. Stirring up old memories. I’m not—I don’t hold a grudge against you, Claude, goodness. I was young and stupid.”

“We both were,” Claude corrects gently. The sound of his voice is a little clearer, like he’s facing Lorenz on the pillow. Lorenz pretends not to notice. “That’s not a crime.”

“I suppose not.” Lorenz fidgets with his sleeves. “I wish I’d never said anything,” he admits. “For a variety of reasons, not least of which the bungling mess I made of our friendship.”

“Don’t be silly. You’re still my best friend, Lor. That’s never changed.”

The blankets shift, and a warm hand finds Lorenz’s arm beneath the covers. “Claude…”

“I just want you to know I care about you, all right? And I… if there’s anything I can do, to make this less difficult for you, let me know.”

Lorenz sighs. “You’re a guest in my home, Claude. Your comfort is what matters most to me.”

“There’s no point in suffering in silence, that’ll just make us both miserable.” There’s a hint of sternness to him now that Lorenz has never heard before—not directed at him, anyway. Only ever at his students. “I don’t want you to feel like a stranger in your own home.”

Lorenz swallows and says nothing. What is there to say? _I’m still in love with you after all these years_? Now, of all times, when they’re cooped up together in close quarters, hardly able to leave the house? Or perhaps something more foolish, like _I’m captivated by the shape of your forearms._ He would rather die.

“I do feel like a stranger sometimes,” Lorenz admits in a low whisper. “But it’s not because of you.”

“The pandemic, you mean.”

“Yes.” Lorenz blows out a sigh through his nose. “I’m glad to have you here. Truly. If you weren’t I think I’d be… having a harder time. And not just because you’ve been feeding me day in and day out. Thank you for that, by the way.”

“It’s the least I can do, considering you won’t even let me help with your bills.”

“Of course I won’t. I’m still making my usual salary, I’m not going to turn around and make a profit off of you.” Lorenz turns in bed at last, flipping onto his right side to squint at Claude’s shape in the darkness. “Where did you learn to cook like that, by the way? I never remember you having an interest in culinary pursuits.”

“My grandfather,” Claude says. “It’s a hobby of his. I guess I picked it up as a stress reliever. Something to get away from a computer screen after grading fifty exams in a row.”

“You’re rather good at it.”

“Thank you. I’m glad you can benefit from me… trying to keep myself sane.”

“Whatever works, I suppose.” Lorenz catches himself chewing on his lower lip and makes himself stop. His heart is still thrumming in his ears. He fears if he doesn’t press the topic of conversation, they’ll fall right back into the first one; but nothing comes to him. His tongue is limp in his mouth and dry as an old sock, and the harder he tries to think of something to say, the faster his conversational skills retreat, until they’re nothing more than shadowy figures far on the horizon of his mind.

Claude takes a deep breath out of nowhere, and it feels like he’s gearing up for a fastball pitch right into Lorenz’s chest. Lorenz braces himself.

"Do you still… Feel the same as you did then?"

Slam, right into his ribs. _And the crowd goes wild._ "Please don't ask me that," Lorenz whispers.

"I'm sorry, I know it's unfair of me, I just… I'm trying to figure some things out. And I want to do right by you. I want you to be happy, Lor."

"A difficult prospect in times like these." He stares at the ceiling and tries to breathe. "I've done a bit of dating here and there, but none of them stuck. If that answers your question."

"Not the right fit?"

"Not by a long shot."

"It's a big world." Pause. "Funny how sometimes the person you're looking for was at your side the whole time."

Lorenz doesn’t know what to say to that. He lays in paralyzed silence for a moment before his brain coughs up a topic and he frantically changes the subject with: “How's tenure going?” Not his smoothest transition. He winces and waits for Claude to call him on it, but…

"It's going fine,” Claude says neutrally. “My mentor thinks this whole situation could… speed things up. I've made myself a bit indispensable to the Department. Why do you ask?"

"You haven't told me much about your career."

"I didn't think you were interested."

"Of course I am. I'm interested in—in everything about you."

A strange quiet falls over them, a rushing quiet like a stream rushing down its gorge, sweeping up everything in its path. The admission had felt like nothing leaving his tongue, easy as breathing, but the repercussions clamor fit to wake the dead. He inhales, and his chest is tight and loathsome.

“Lorenz,” Claude tries again, with the air of a man determined to give it one more shot, even at the expense of his sanity, “I don't want to cross a line here, but I want you to know I regret… some things. About that night.”

“Okay,” Lorenz says dumbly. Unsure of what to say. Unsure of what he _can_ say.

"I was an ass to you then; I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't take you seriously."

 _But are you sorry that you broke my heart?_ It's the kind of question he'll never ask out loud, too weighed down by the demon on his chest to voice it. “Like you said. We were young and stupid.”

“You weren’t—” Claude begins sharply, then stops, retreats, softens the edge of the blade in his hand even as it traces its killing strike along the underside of Lorenz’s ribs. “You weren’t stupid, all right? You took a chance. You were brave, far braver than I was.”

“I forgave you a long time ago,” Lorenz says softly. “You don’t have to keep apologizing. You can’t help what you felt.”

“I didn’t know _what_ I felt. I was just… afraid. And I let that fear rule me, instead of being honest with you.”

“Claude…”

“I won’t… I won’t say anything more. I’ve pushed the envelope enough as it is, and with us stuck here together… well, it wouldn’t be fair. I know that.” Claude takes a deep breath. “So that’s… that’s all I wanted to say. For now. Sorry for pushing you. I just needed to get it off my chest.”

Lorenz doesn’t know quite how to respond to that, so he doesn’t. Instead he thinks about the dock, hard beneath his elbow, the cool water lapping at his ankles, the warmth of Claude’s lips. That brief moment of ecstasy, before everything crumbled around him.

He can hear Claude breathing in the dark, suddenly. Not the soft whiffling snores he sometimes emits when he sleeps, but the quick shallow rasp of a man who’s just run up a flight of stairs and is trying not to sound winded. A match for the heart slamming in his own chest. Making up his mind, Lorenz fumbles under the covers for Claude's hand and grips it tight when he finds it. It makes him feel a little less like his heart is about to careen out of his chest and launch itself into the stratosphere, powered by fear and hope. Claude squeezes back, silent.

* * *

Lorenz wakes earlier than usual, around the time Claude usually gets out of bed. It’s a Friday, which means he has two morning lectures and an afternoon packed with grading while maintaining an open “office hours” Zoom connection in the event that a student has questions. Claude doesn’t sleep in on Fridays. Which makes the warmth bleeding into Lorenz’s spine difficult to explain.

He moves as gently as he can, turning to look over his shoulder. Claude is still passed out, mouth slightly open, stretched out on against Lorenz’s back like a cat sunning himself in a patch of early morning warmth. When Lorenz shifts away, Claude follows, burying his face between his bedmate's shoulder blades with a little huff.

Lorenz lays very still. His heart is beating too fast, but it slows again gradually, lulled into complacency when Claude only sleeps on. It feels… rather nice, actually. When he concentrates he can feel every exhale through the fabric of his shirt, and the extra warmth of full-body contact softens his brittle bones against the chill of the room. His eyes grow heavy despite himself. Deep inside, in a place where the barrier around his heart has worn thin, he wonders what it means. If it means anything at all.

He almost drops off to sleep again, but Claude wakes before he can manage it. Lorenz feels it in the way he stiffens, the way his breathing changes. Claude lifts his head away from Lorenz’s back and seems to be checking to see whether he’s awake. Lorenz doesn’t open his eyes. After a moment or two, Claude gingerly peels himself away and slips out of bed.

The minute he’s descended the ladder, Lorenz turns onto his stomach in the warm spot he left and pulls the blankets up around his ears, breathing in the smell of their shared sleep. This time he does drop off, and wakes again an hour later more rested than he’s felt in days.

He doesn’t say anything out of the ordinary when he descends the ladder for breakfast: oatmeal still bubbling on the stove, rich with butter and maple syrup and dried fruit. Just a nod of greeting, a shared smile that tugs at Claude’s mouth even as he talks his way through the secession of Bangladesh to a mosaiced screen of nearly fifty faces. Lorenz tucks his bathrobe around his waist a little more neatly and moves past him into the kitchen to make tea.

He must have only been in the frame for a moment, but it was long enough. There’s a hitch in the cadence of Claude’s delivery, a pause as if he’s listening to a question through his headset. Then he says, “Oh, that’s my best friend, Lorenz. I’m staying with him right now.”

Lorenz’s hand stills as it reaches for the whisk, then picks up again, a little smile affixed to his face that he can’t erase.

* * *

_two years ago_

"You didn't say he was going to be here."

"I wasn't totally sure he was coming,” Marianne whispers apologetically, casting a searching glance across the crowded room. “I thought things were fine with you two now?"

"They _are_ fine. I just wish I could have had a little time to… mentally prepare.” Lorenz takes a bracing breath and turns to face the drinks table. “What are you having, my dear?”

“Oh, I’m not drinking, I need to focus on hosting—”

“Nonsense. You did a lot of work getting the house ready for tonight, you deserve to relax a little. Here, some champagne and a bit of cranberry juice. Light, easy breezy. Just like you.” He has the drink mixed and handed over by the time he’s finished speaking, hands moving even faster than his trembling tongue. He kisses her cheek as the flute changes hands, and she softens into it.

“Well, I suppose one or two wouldn’t hurt.”

“Precisely. We both know the real gem of a hostess is your lovely wife, anyway.” He turns, leading their gazes through the collection of close friends and family packed into Marianne and Hilda’s new place, funded almost completely through Hilda’s skyrocketing jewelry business. The woman herself stands in a circle of admirers, wearing a sleek black dress that serves as a mere backdrop for the diamonds glittering at her throat, her wrists, her ears. She cradles a champagne flute of her own delicately, gesticulating with her free hand as she holds court, petite but magnetic.

The gathered company shifts around her like gravity around a black hole, parting to reveal the man standing languid at her side. Roughly her height with the heels she’s sporting, hair dark and stylishly tousled, he stands with one hip kilted like a statue, a glass of scotch in one hand and the other draped around Hilda’s bare shoulders. Lorenz’s stomach curdles sharply and he sets to mixing his own drink.

_Mojito. The mint will settle my stomach._

“Lorenz…”

Marianne still clings to his side, not quite at ease in the sea of people invading her home, even if they _are_ all known to her. She hovers just out of his line of sight, visible as a tall, slim column of navy blue and shimmering, gossamer-silver hair. She, too, serves as a statement piece tonight, if not quite as glittering and glitzy as her wife. When he turns to face her, drink in hand, the pearls around her neck seem to glow against the milky white of her throat, small moons adrift in a brilliant sea. Lorenz blinks and rubs his forehead.

“Yes, my dear?”

“Are you sure you’re—”

“Well, well, look who it is. Aren’t you two a sight for sore eyes!”

Lorenz stifles a wince as any fleeting thoughts he’d had of fading into the background goes flying out the window. He takes a bracing sip of his mojito and turns, smile stitched firmly into place, to watch Claude pull Marianne into a one-armed hug. She widens her eyes at Lorenz meaningfully as Claude kisses her cheek, but it’s no use. Lorenz is frozen like a statue, can do nothing more than pat Claude’s back clumsily when it’s his turn for an embrace. One-armed, hip to hip wedged in beside the drinks table. _Sans_ kiss. His cheek tingles where Claude’s lips might have brushed, if he—

_Stop. You’re friends. Act like it._

“Good evening, Claude,” he says, and somehow his voice is warm and welcoming, not a hint of the turmoil inside showing on his face. The veneer is thin—thinner than paper, thinner than the wing of a rain-drenched butterfly—but it holds. “I wasn’t sure you were coming, it’s lovely to see you.”

Claude laughs easily, like he always does, teeth blinding white, eyes crinkling so deeply they nearly disappear altogether. “You haven’t changed a bit, Lorenz,” he says, and it would almost come off an insult except that he follows it up with, “except your hair, Christ, look at you! I almost didn’t recognize you—the length really suits you.”

“Thank you,” Lorenz says, taken aback by the earnest compliment. “You are… looking well yourself.”

It’s true. He _is_ looking well. Very well. He looks a bit tired, but magnificently cheerful despite it, a bit blush in the face from the warm room and the drink in his hand. His hair is a little longer than Lorenz remembers it, his beard a little fuller, features in general more pronounced and masculine. And he seems to have put on some muscle, given the way his shoulders strain beneath the breadth of his suit coat. He looks, in a word, mouthwatering. Lorenz takes another sip of his drink.

“That’s awfully nice of you to say,” Claude says breezily, ignorant of the untoward thoughts squirreling to life beneath the hoarfrost of Lorenz’s demeanor. “I feel like I’ve aged a decade in the last year.”

“You don’t look it.” Lorenz notes, with some despair, that Marianne, his bulwark, his bastion against beautiful men with white smiles and deep cheek dimples, has conveniently vanished for parts unknown. _Damn it._ “Are you liking teaching all right, then?”

“It has its ups and downs. The teaching part I love, it’s the rest of it… bah. University politics, that’s all. Boring stuff. What about you? Things seem to be going well, if your Instagram is any indication.”

Lorenz tries not to look as surprised as he feels. He can count on one hand the amount of times Claude has interacted with his posts in the last year—he’d assumed his friend was too busy for silly things like social media. Well, not silly to him; insinuating himself into the upper echelons of New York’s fashion scene required networking in various forms, social media being one of them.

He answers honestly—yes, things are going very well, thanks in part to Hilda’s glittering social circle and multiple contacts in the fashion industry—and they fall into a surface-level conversation about their jobs, and their friends, and the new Goneril-Edmund house with all its princess polish. Between the small talk and the mojito, Lorenz finds himself tentatively relaxing. _This isn’t so bad. I can do this. I could get used to this._

He’s feeling quite emboldened by the time Hilda announces the tapas have been laid out in the dining room for people to eat at their leisure, and when Claude asks if he wants to grab a bite he readily agrees.

Lulled into a false sense of security, floating on the high of white rum and Claude’s dazzling green eyes, he doesn’t notice the entrance of a tall, broad-chested redhead until there’s a hand on his shoulder and a musky amber smell in his nose. Dread pierces the helium balloon in his chest with one quick strike, and he watches the grin drop off Claude’s face as the newcomer kisses his cheek.

“Hey there, stranger. Looking lovely as always.”

“Sylvain,” Lorenz manages, scrambling for a neutral tone. He’d forgotten the Gautier heir was on the guest list. Of course he was. This was _Hilda’s_ party—anyone who was anyone under thirty-five was here. “Hello.”

“Didn’t think I’d see you here,” Sylvain goes on, conveniently ignoring Claude, who is watching this unfold with a terrifyingly unreadable expression on his face. “Considering you ghosted me when I asked if you’d be my plus one, and all.”

“I apologize,” Lorenz says, and he almost means it. “I’ve been quite busy, I meant to return your call.”

“Hey, that’s all right. You can make it up to me by letting me take you home.” Sylvain winks and finally deigns to turn to Claude, oozing rich-boy charisma from every pore like a pheromone. A trick Lorenz has never quite learned to master. “And who’s this? I don’t think I’ve seen you around at one of these do’s before.”

“Claude,” Claude says blandly. He doesn’t offer a last name. “Friend of the ladies’ from school. And Lorenz. We were just catching up, but please,” and he grins whitely but without humor, teeth about as welcoming as a shark’s, “feel free to cut in.”

“Oh that’s all right, I don’t want to deprive you of your reminiscing.” Sylvain’s hand is still on Lorenz’s shoulder, warm and proprietary. A week ago those hands had seemed like a good idea, a bottle of wine deep on a rooftop bar with a yawning, lonely pit inside him threatening to swallow him whole. Now Lorenz thinks, quietly miserable, that he’s never regretted a rebound hookup more. “I’ll catch you later, sweetheart, all right?” He directs this at Lorenz, paired with a gentle stroke to his jaw and a wicked gleam of good humor in his honey-colored eyes. Lorenz tries to remember melting for those eyes, that hand on his neck, and comes up empty.

“Of course,” he says, forcing it out past the sound of static in his ears. Sylvain drifts away, sucked into the colorful crowd that ebbs and flows around them, and Lorenz turns back to find Claude watching him.

“Friend of yours?”

“Of sorts.” A hysterical giggle wants to bubble up, but swallows it back, trying not to think too hard about the memory of Sylvain’s cock in his throat in a bathroom stall, the tile cold and unforgiving beneath his knees. “We move in the same circles but we’re not… terribly close.”

“Hmm.” Claude hums skeptically. The smile on his face is… odd. Ill-fitting. “Seems like you’ve settled into city life pretty well,” he says, and Lorenz wonders why it sounds like an accusation.

Abruptly, anger wells up in him, sharp and hot. How dare Claude come here and make flat-mouthed expressions at him like he’s _disappointed_. Wasn’t this what he wanted? For Lorenz to _explore_ what the city had to offer? _Find himself?_

“It’s not all bad,” he says. He can’t tell if his voice is shaking, but he’s afraid if he takes his hands out of his lap to reach for his drink, they’ll be trembling with rage—so he keeps them where he is, and takes a brutal satisfaction in the flicker of uncertainty on Claude’s face. “No shortage of romantic partners, for one. I’ve learned quite a lot about myself in just a few months.” He does take up his drink, then, if only to keep from running his mouth and his friendship into the ground, and lifts it in an ironic little toast. “To finding ourselves. Wherever the path leads.”

Claude is slow to lift his glass, and he sips it as Lorenz throws back the rest of his mojito in silence. The ice stings his teeth and the back of his throat but he swallows it down anyway.

“Another?” Claude asks suddenly, standing up. The plate they’ve been sharing is only half empty, but Lorenz has lost his appetite. He nods, and Claude turns to weave his way back to the drinks table.

Lorenz stands and leaves the room as soon as Claude’s back is turned. He’s not a habitual smoker, but he happens to know that Sylvain keeps an emergency pack in his pocket for parties, and there’s a balcony off the upstairs media room just begging to be stood and brooded on.

He just needs a break. From the people, and the noise, and the memory of Claude’s soft eyes branded fresh against the inside of his skull. He’s not angry anymore, he realizes suddenly, to his immense disappointment. Anger is easier than heartbreak. But with any luck, a smoke and a bit of time alone will scrub it from his mind and he’ll be able to return to the party fresh, and pretend he was never in love with Claude von Riegan, not even a little bit, not even at all.

* * *

_now_

Today marks the start of the fourth week in quarantine. Lorenz isn’t aware of it yet—it’s too early, not even six in the morning. When he wakes up properly, later, he’ll check his phone, and the calendar will announce _week four_ , and tell him to get up and do half an hour of yoga before Claude’s first lecture starts.

But not yet. Right now he’s warm and cozy, snuggled beneath the blankets, the solid weight of an arm draped around his waist.

Well. _That’s_ unusual. Unusual enough to rouse him slightly, though his mind remains steeped in slumber. Beneath his cheek, he slowly realizes, is not a pillow but a chest, warm and broad and hairy—and since _when_ has Claude slept without a shirt on? He can’t for the life of him remember. Has he really been that blind, not to notice? Surely not. He distinctly remembers Claude putting on a ratty old tee from a Smith’s concert before bed last week. It was the first time Lorenz had come up to bed early enough to catch him changing, and he’d immediately fled back down the stairs, praying Claude hadn’t noticed him.

Claude is surely noticing him now. Lorenz can feel the hand at his back stroking slightly in place, and the rise and fall of the chest beneath his cheek is too quick and shallow for sleep. For once, he can’t bring himself to care. He had the most lovely dream, though he can’t remember it now, and to wake in Claude’s arms like this just feels… natural. Right.

“Time is it,” Lorenz rasps, yawning wetly into the hollow of Claude’s throat. Claude swallows, and Lorenz can hear the _click_ of his esophagus right next to his ear.

“Almost six,” Claude murmurs. His hand continues to stroke Lorenz’s waist, the other arm flung out beneath the pillow Lorenz usually uses. He doesn’t seem uncomfortable, to Lorenz’s sleep-soaked mind. At least, not until he flexes slightly beneath Lorenz’s weight and adds, “My arm’s falling asleep, d’you mind if I…”

Lorenz yawns again, turning his face into Claude’s shoulder. Under his arm is rather hairy, too, he can’t help noticing. He reluctantly pushes himself up onto his elbow and frowns down at him, blinking past the dried grit crusting his eyelids. “I don’t remember you having so much hair,” he says, matter-of-factly. Then he flops over onto his other side and into the depths of his pillow, which is pleasantly cool from not having been slept on.

He’s already more than halfway back to sleep when he feels the blankets being pulled up around his shoulders and tucked in, neat as a pin. He hums, toes curling in the warm sheets.

“Go back to sleep,” Claude whispers, somewhere near his ear. So he does.

When he wakes again, his phone tells him it’s the fourth week of quarantine. He gets out of bed. Brushes his hair and ties it in a tail. Pulls on loose sweatpants that may or may not belong to Claude—they both have a heather grey pair with SLU on the hip, both so well worn they’re difficult to tell apart—and slumps down the stairs for tea and yoga while Claude sings under his breath at the stove. His neck is a bit stiff, but the peppy, petite girl on the TV eases him through a series of sun salutations until he can stand up straight again.

“Sleep all right?” Claude asks when he comes poking around the kitchen. He’s got an omelet half-cooked in the pan, ready to flip, and he shoos Lorenz away as he assumes the ready stance.

“I did, thank you. You’re not _quite_ as comfortable as my pillow, but nearly,” Lorenz says, straight-faced.

Claude casts him a _look_ —furrowed brow, shining eyes, smirking mouth—and flips the omelet perfectly. Lorenz golf claps. “Thank you, thank you.”

“In seriousness,” Lorenz says, turning to rinse his tea bowl in the sink, “I hope I wasn’t too disruptive. I’m not usually so…”

“Cuddly?” Claude finishes for him, a teasing edge to his voice. He tips the omelete onto a plate and cuts it neatly into two pieces. As if on cue, two pieces of toast pop out of the toaster at Lorenz’s elbow. “Would you butter those?”

“‘Course.” Lorenz leaves his bowl in the sink for later and applies a generous layer of butter to the pieces of toast. When he turns, Claude is holding two plates out, the omelet halves divided between them.

“It’s fine,” Claude says, and it takes Lorenz a moment to realize he means the cuddling, not the toast. He smiles a small, private smile, eyes crinkling soft at their corners like butterfly wings in their cocoons. “I _am_ sorry about all the hair, though.”

Lorenz sputters. “I didn’t mean—I wasn’t fully awake, I—”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Claude laughs. He follows Lorenz to the table and sits opposite him, ignoring the closed laptop at the fourth place setting for now. His lecture is in fifteen minutes, but he doesn’t seem in a hurry to get set up. Instead he cuts into his fluffy omelet with the side of his fork and brushes Lorenz’s feet beneath the table with his own, and Lorenz blushes and wonders if it was on accident or on purpose. “Turns out I take after my dad in that department, I guess.” He lifts his other hand and runs it through the hair on his head, which is long and curly and starting to fall into his eyes and over his ears even when he attempts to tame it with product. “Actually…”

“Hmm?” Lorenz hums around a mouthful of omelet. _Fuck, this is good. How does he make eggs taste this good?_

Claude nods his chin in Lorenz’s direction. “You gave yourself a trim the other day, right? I was wondering if you could do the same for me. It’s getting a bit ridiculous. I look like a sheepdog.”

 _A very cute sheepdog_ , Lorenz thinks, and just barely avoids saying out loud. “I’m afraid I don’t really have the proper scissors for it,” he ventures after swallowing, not quite willing to turn him down outright. “I mean, I have a set of clippers for emergencies, but…”

“So shave me!” Claude offers, far too cheerfully. “Just the sides and back, if you want. A few of my students have undercuts, seems like a fun time.”

Lorenz squints, trying to picture him with a side shave. He himself keeps the nape of his neck trimmed short, an easy, trendy undercut that serves as an excuse for regular visits to his barber. He likes having someone he trusts put their hands in his hair. It’s… soothing. Truth be told, he misses it; had missed Raf’s steady hands two days ago when he’d been trimming his nape himself with a complex mirror setup and constant check-ins with Claude to make sure he wasn’t bungling everything on accident.

Being in charge of someone else’s hair is terrifying, but _surely_ far easier than doing the back of his own head blind. “I could try,” he says doubtfully, “but I can’t promise it’ll look any good.”

“That’s all right.” Claude winks. “Hair grows back.”

 _Hair… and other things_ , Lorenz muses. He kicks Claude’s foot gently under the table. “All right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

After Claude’s two o’clock lecture, he sends a blanket email— _no office hours today, please email with any questions_ —and strips down to his skin in the middle of Lorenz’s kitchen. His bare feet are brown and flecked with hair where they’re planted on the tile, and his right knee bounces idly, stretching the soft fabric of his sweatpants as he watches Lorenz fiddle with the extension cord.

“Should I shower first?” he asks.

“No, that’s all right. Clippers work best on dry hair.” Lorenz frowns and clips the guard into place. Number three to start, though it feels awfully short against Claude’s shaggy curls. “Just let me tie up the part you want left long.”

He doesn’t have fancy hair clips like they do at salons, so he makes do with the little black elastics he uses to tie his hair up on hot days. Despite its texture, Claude’s hair is very soft to the touch. Lorenz uses a fine tooth comb to part it evenly around his crown, and ties it up into three little buns on top of his head, trying not to think too hard about the warmth of his scalp, or the spicy-clean-cotton smell of his hair. A stray lock flops over his forehead and Lorenz sweeps it back in with the rest. His skin is soft too, he notices. Claude blinks, and Lorenz can practically hear the sweep of his eyelashes against his cheek.

“How’s that?” he asks, passing Claude the hand mirror.

“Stylish,” Claude quips. He tilts his head this way and that. “Looks fine to me. Chop away.”

The hum of the clippers is grounding. Lorenz quickly falls into a rhythm: take a lock of hair in his left hand, hold it away from Claude’s scalp, and run the guard up against his head until the hair comes off in his hand and can be discarded to the floor. He has a _lot_ of hair, and it quickly piles up. Strands fall to his bare shoulders and catch there, or sift down his back and stick between his shoulder blades and the back of the chair. Lorenz ignores them for now, focusing on the man beneath his hands.

He feels almost like a sculptor, uncovering layer after layer of marble to find the living spirit entombed within. He blows gently on Claude’s ear at one point, hands too full to brush away the stray bits of hair sticking there, and Claude shivers. A tiny, subconscious motion that makes Lorenz realize just how perfectly still he’s been sitting.

“Doing all right?” he asks as he comes around to Claude’s left side. “Almost done with the first pass.”

“My ear is cold,” Claude says. His voice is low and rumbly in his chest, like he’s just woken from a nap. “Feels good.”

Lorenz swallows and continues his work. Once Claude has been shaved all the way around, he switches out the number three guard for a two, hands trembling a little against the blunt plastic points.

Without the buzz of the clippers filling the kitchen he feels strangely naked, even though he’s fully dressed. The sun comes through the window at an angle through the buildings across the street, pouring over Claude’s chest and shoulders and turning them gold. But Lorenz isn’t Midas—merely an unworthy subject, fumbling to piece together his petition for clemency.

_Forgive me. Forgive me for loving you, for wanting all of you, every piece. Forgive me for being unable to say it, even now, even after all this time._

_Forgive me for still wanting you._

“I’m going to trim around your ears now,” he says, and Claude tilts his head to the side to give him access.

In college Claude had just been starting to grow facial hair. Sophomore year was a long string of experiments: ridiculous sideburns, a soul patch and nothing else, shapes carved into his chin, a patchy caterpillar of a mustache that he groomed religiously until he got tired of the itch and shaved it off all in one go.

It’s hard to say for sure what he prefers these days. Quarantine has made him lax, and he only shaves a few times a week. In between, he grows a thick stubble that darkens his cheeks, making him look like a woodsman, or a heroic journalist slogging through mud and rain to report on atrocities.

Today his five o’clock shadow feels like the finest grit of sandpaper under his fingers as Lorenz trims his sideburns to match, delicately flicking the end of the clippers to blend with the slightly longer hair on his head. In a moment of weakness, he lets himself cup that strong jaw, lets his thumb pull gently at the skin to better trim around his ear. Claude’s hands flex in his lap and relax again, docile.

With his hands occupied, his mind wanders. He is becoming slowly, dreadfully aware of how successfully he’s avoided Claude’s direct presence until this very moment. True, they’ve occupied the same space, worked at the same table, slept in the same goddamn bed—but Lorenz has been so careful. Avoiding physical contact wherever possible. Putting up barriers in his mind. Don’t look at him, don’t think about the curl of his hands around his mug. Hold your breath when he walks by after a shower, smelling of peppermint and clove.

Now here he is, half naked in his kitchen, submitting to Lorenz’s hands. Beneath his eye as surely as a slide beneath a microscope. The very pattern of his breathing is as familiar to Lorenz as his own, the sweet-spicy smell of his hair turned neutral through exposure, the rasp of his hair numbing against the tips of his fingers.

 _Stop obsessing_ , he tells himself sternly, but it’s no use. The walls he spent so long putting in place have been beaten down to so much useless rubble over the course of ten minutes. All he can do now is stand in the wreckage and pray the dust hides how close he is to breaking.

He presses his hand to the back of Claude’s neck to bow his head forward, and Claude’s breath hitches in his chest as he concedes to the pressure. “How do you want the back?” Lorenz asks, voice worn down to a croak. He clears his throat, embarrassed. “A point, or straight across…?”

“How-however,” Claude says. “Whatever you think would look best.”

_I regret… some things. About that night._

Safely out of sight, Lorenz traces his thumb along the nape of Claude’s neck. He can see it when goosebumps lift the skin there. Can feel the shiver, the ache, as Claude leans into the clipper guard and his hand around his shoulder.

He wants to ask what Claude regrets, but his tongue is trapped behind his teeth and the words won’t come. The hum of the clippers would drown him out, anyway. Hard to hold a conversation when a small motor is buzzing incessantly in your ears. He plays with the idea anyway. Tries to imagine what Claude would say. If he would say anything at all, or if he would be like Lorenz, cowed by the reality of their situation, knowing that if the wrong thing is said, the wrong boundary breached, they will have no choice but to live with the discomfort—or the pain—for an unknown amount of time.

He gently presses the top of Claude’s ear away from his head to get behind it and nearly drops the clippers. Not from any great discovery; just the strange and ineffable reality of holding this funny little bit of cartilage and skin, such a delicate place, a place hardly anyone has touched before but Claude himself. The skin is slightly freckled here, the way his shoulder blades are in the summer. Lorenz remembers watching his sienna-gold skin turn brown and sundrenched from his end of the canoe as they splashed about the mountain lake, as they staked their claim to waterlilies and spits of rocky land that scarcely deserved the name _island_.

Lorenz brushes his thumb along the outer shell of his ear. Trims, trims, trims. The hum of the clippers feels like it’s shaking its way down to bone, and he realizes he’s got the handle clutched in a death grip. He steps back and switches it off, and the kitchen goes silent as the grave.

“All done?” Claude asks cheerfully. He seems largely unaffected by the experience, lifting a hand to rub the fine bristle at the nape of his neck. “It feels great. Thank you.”

“Here,” Lorenz mumbles, shoving the hand mirror into his grasp. “See what you think of the back.”

Claude retreats to the bathroom to look and Lorenz fumbles with the broom for a moment, making a half-hearted attempt to tidy up before his shaking hands grow too feeble to grasp the handle. He braces his elbows on the counter and puts his head down onto the cool laminate.

The room presses in around him suddenly, hot and dark like a cave, or a cocoon. He can vaguely hear Claude making pleased noises, and it’s enough for him—he takes the excuse and runs with it, slipping out of the kitchen and down the stairs. He doesn’t care, anymore, whether Claude notices or follows him. He just has to get _out_.

He’s gasping for air by the time he makes it to the garden. He lowers himself to one of the cinderblocks stacked beside the door and leans his head against the siding, face tipped skyward. The sun is out but the air is cold—it stings his cheeks and his lungs as he sucks it down, chest burning like he’s drowning on dry land.

There are tulips beginning to bud just at his knee, and snowdrops clumped here and there where they sprung out of the soil from nothing. So delicate and fragile. The white teardrops of their petals are closed against the chill, but they bloom valiantly all the same. He feels not unlike a snowdrop at this moment: trembling and new, pushing his way out of the earth into a world that feels cold and unaccommodating. And yet he remains. He shuts his eyes and breathes.

A few minutes pass before the door creaks open to his left and Claude steps into the garden in his sock feet. He sits next to Lorenz on a slightly taller stack of cinderblocks, not seeming to mind the dirt and flecks of mulch now sticking to his toes. Lorenz waits uncomfortably for the question, the concern, the _why?_

But it never comes. Claude only sits beside him, forearms draped over his knees, and breathes. Lorenz can see the rise and fall of his shoulders out of the corner of his eye. As the minutes tick past, he finds himself matching that steady beat, like the distant sigh of waves dragging themselves along the shore. And he breathes.

“Do you hate it?” Lorenz asks. Claude twitches slightly in his periphery, startled.

“I love it. It’s different. Fresh.” He drags his palm against the back of his head, and Lorenz can hear the rasp of skin against bristle, can imagine the stiff-velvet feel of it. There’s nothing quite like the comfort of a fresh shave. “Thank you.”

“Of course. It was my pleasure.” Lorenz examines his hands, still flecked with bits of dark hair. “I apologize for leaving so abruptly, I… needed some air.”

“It’s all right. You don’t have to explain.” Claude pauses. “But if you want to… to talk about it, I’m happy to listen. Or… advise.”

Lorenz’s mouth creases in something like a smile. “You’ve been playing guidance counselor for your students for weeks. I can’t ask you to pour more of that effort onto me.”

“And why not?”

“It’s… I’m…”

 _Your best friend_ , he thinks, and sighs. It had been true, once. Despite Claude’s insistence, the title rings a little hollow. Perhaps he’s more at fault for that than he would like to admit.

“I’ve been struggling, I think,” he says eventually. “With all of this. Everyone is, I know, I’m not special in that regard.”

Claude hums neutrally. “That doesn’t negate what you’re feeling. What you’re going through.”

“It feels like I shouldn’t complain. I _know_ I shouldn’t. I… I still have a job, an income. I have… companionship.”

“An interloper, more like.”

“A friend,” Lorenz says firmly. “I’m not accustomed to sharing my space so intimately, it’s true, but without you here… I would be worse off.”

Claude sits with this a moment. He’s plucked a snowdrop from the bed of its brethren and is twirling it gently between thumb and forefinger, watching the delicate petals swirl in and out like a ballerina’s tulle. Then he takes a breath and says, “I feel like there are things we aren’t saying to each other. Am I crazy?”

Lorenz swallows. “I think that’s a fair assessment.”

“Because there’s a balance, right. A status quo. We’re each of us trying not to rock the boat. But it’s reaching a breaking point, isn’t it? Like we’re ignoring the water filling up, pretending if we don’t look it won’t capsize us and drown us both.”

“...Poetic,” Lorenz says, impressed despite himself. How had Claude managed to capture that tight, awful dread in his chest so perfectly?

“Sorry. We’ve been doing modern vernacular poetry in my Chinese Lit class. My brain is kind of already there.”

“No, it’s… you’re exactly right.” Lorenz feels that dread again, like a hand shoving his face away—look down, look away, don’t acknowledge it. But he forces his chin up anyway, staring down the paint flaking away from the fence as he says, “I haven’t been completely honest with you about… the state of things. With me.”

Claude nods, a jerky motion that sends his loose, unformed curls tumbling down the side of his cropped head. “Likewise. I’ve wanted to talk to you about… some things… for a while now, but. Not like this.”

“Not in quarantine, you mean.”

“Right. It doesn’t seem fair, when we don’t have… an escape.”

“The garden doesn’t count, I suppose.”

“I meant, you know.” He lifts his hand and twirls it around in illustration. “It’s still the same _house_ , really. We still sleep in the same bed.”

Lorenz chews his lip. “We’re still treading water.”

“Yeah.” Claude huffs a laugh, and it falls a little flat. “Right. I’ll go first, then?”

“Well that doesn’t seem fair. You already made some… very kind overtures, last week.” Lorenz twists his fingers in his lap, ostensibly to rid himself of the bits of hair sticking stubbornly to his skin. “I’m the one who lost his head over nothing and had to leave the house before he had a panic attack. Ridiculous.”

“Not ridiculous,” Claude says gently. And then he waits.

Lorenz stares at the dirt and speaks, too hot and quivery with nerves to feel the chill seeping into him from all corners. “I thought I was… over it. When I invited you. We’d seen each other a few times since—” He hesitates, decides not to elaborate, and presses on. “And things seemed fine. Normal. Hell, we’ve talked on the phone every week for three years, you would think I’d know if I was still.” _Gulp._ “In love with you.”

Claude is quiet. His shoulders seem to ease a little, the snowdrop spinning more slowly in his grasp. Head bowed. The shell of his ear is exposed by his new haircut, listening. Lorenz gathers his courage for another sortie.

“I’m sorry that it’s affecting me so deeply. I value your presence in my life, and the idea that I might be jeopardizing that sickens me. But… having you here, so close, it’s… it’s like torture,” he admits, half-laughing to keep himself from crying. “I know you didn’t feel the same as I did then, I know that you may very well be gearing up to reject me a second time, but I—I’m not proposing anything, I don’t want to ask anything of you. I can cope, I think. And I’ll grow out of it eventually, maybe, or maybe I won’t and this will just be… how it is, for me. But you knowing, and accepting it, letting it be what it is… that’s the best I can hope for. It’s all I ask. I don’t need you to feel the same, just please—” and now, here at the end of his little impromptu speech, he finally feels the back of his throat closing up and his eyes prickling hot with tears, “—please don’t leave. I don’t know what I’d do without…”

He can’t finish. He doesn’t know how. _Without you_ is too much, too real, even after everything he’s already said.

There’s a beat or two of quiet that stretches interminably, then ends all at once, with a soft inhale and a shift as Claude sits up on his cinderblock perch. “Thank you for telling me,” he says. His voice is soft and easy to listen to, as always. Like stepping out of the shade of a tree into a warm patch of sun. “And before I say anything else, I want to apologize. I was maybe sort of… hoping that our forced proximity would… trigger something. Help things along.”

“How kind.”

“Not—I don’t mean to belittle you when I say that. I speak about myself as much as I speak about your own feelings. Maybe even more so.” He pauses, for breath and perhaps to see whether Lorenz has any interjections to make. About a hundred rise to his lips, but he forces them back, abruptly cold and clammy and strangely excited as he waits for Claude’s next words. “Three years ago I was… scared. I thought I felt something between us, maybe, but we were about to go in two wildly different directions, jumpstart our careers, and I didn’t know what that meant for us as _friends_ , let alone… well. I couldn’t imagine anything but disaster.

“And I figured, with you coming to New York City, there’s no _way_ you wouldn’t find someone wonderful to snap you up and make you happy. And if that happened while I was plugging away up north, chained to my desk for the next six years trying to get tenure, it… it would have broken my heart to let you go. Better to ignore anything I felt for you that was more than friendship. Avoid the heartbreak part, skip right to being the best man at your wedding and pretending it was enough.”

Lorenz sucks in a breath and holds it, trying to imagine. The only thing he can conjure in the pit of his stomach is sorrow. “That would never have happened.”

“I know. Well, I know that _now_.” Claude rubs his hair, the shaggy part, shoving it out of his eyes. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”

“I’m sorry I sprung it on you out of the blue like that.”

Claude’s eyes crease with laughter. “You did kind of wait til the last minute.”

“I was scared too, believe it or not. But determined to make a fool of myself.” Lorenz scarcely recognizes himself as he speaks, and marvels at it—how easy it is, suddenly, to laugh about it, to joke about the crushing anguish that had consumed him for weeks, months afterward. But he still has questions, and now that the initial barricade has been torn down, he can’t keep them all in order. They bounce around the inside of his skull like tennis balls, and after a minute or two the one that falls out first is, “Why didn’t you say anything before now?”

“I didn’t know if it would be… well received. You seemed happy at the holiday party this past year, and before that, at Mari and Hil’s housewarming ’do…”

“Sylvain,” Lorenz groans without even letting him finish the sentence. “That was such a disaster.”

“I was so fucking jealous,” Claude admits. “I wanted to rip his head off for touching you, when I’d finally got you alone, sort of, to talk…”

Lorenz’s chest stabs hot with old agony, serrated at the edges with bewilderment. “If… if I had stayed, and listened to you…”

“I don’t know. I was kind of terrified then, too. Afraid you’d moved on—hell, I thought you _had_ moved on.”

“Not in any way that mattered. Flings, here and there. Nothing that stuck.”

Claude grimaces. “I’m sorry. I feel like I ruined that for you, too.”

“How? By existing?” Lorenz teases gently.

“Well…”

“It’s not far off. I couldn’t help but compare every man I met to you. I was horrible on dates. So missish and particular.”

“ _Was_?”

“I gave up eventually. It didn’t seem worth it, when every attempt just led to disappointment. And my work took up a lot of my time. Getting a startup off the ground is no easy task.”

“You’re brilliant, you know,” Claude says abruptly, turning to him. Unprepared for the intensity of direct eye contact, Lorenz feels himself flush and retreat a little into himself. “You’re doing amazing work, you have a wonderful team. Everything I see and hear about you is all good things.”

“Claude…”

“It’s true. You deserve to hear it, and not just from the papers, or fashion bloggers, or whoever.” Claude sighs, subsides, chuckles a little at himself as he leans against the side of the house. “Sorry. Again. I’m just so proud of you. I’m amazed by you every day.” He leans his knee sideways to knock against Lorenz’s thigh, a gentle love tap. “Can’t believe I ever convinced myself I wasn’t head over heels for you.”

Lorenz buries his face in his hands. “Now you’re just laying it on a bit thick.”

“Yeah, well. I have three years to make up for.” Claude sighs, drawn back toward melancholy. An all-too-easy focal point these days. “At least you have your career to show for it. Still feels like I’m stuck in limbo, now more than ever.”

Lorenz is surprised by the gravitas in his voice. Claude is usually so peppy about his work, even when a student or a deadline is stressing him out. He loves teaching—it’s written all over his face, his eagerness to get out of bed in the morning, his determination to make long-distance learning work for his students. But there’s more to professorship than teaching. Without tenure Claude’s job security is flimsy at best, and Lorenz has gathered here and there, like stray coins, little pieces of the bowing and scraping Claude has to do to ingratiate himself with department heads and faculty admins.

“You’re incredible,” he blurts out, before wondering—too late—if such things are unwelcome. “Your students love you, I can tell. This won’t last forever. And like you said: you’re indispensable. As soon as the university’s financial freeze is over they’ll be begging to tenure you.”

Claude chuffs with laughter and glances over at him. “Exactly. Speak it into existence.”

“It’s just the truth,” Lorenz insists. He’s still a little flustered, but he gathers himself enough to reach out and take Claude’s hand. Claude accepts readily, sliding their fingers together on his knee. “You haven’t, um… I suppose it’s not appropriate to ask, but…”

“Ask away, darling. Nothing’s off limits, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Have you seen anyone in the last few years?”

“Dated, you mean?”

“ _Yes_ I mean dated. Or just…” Lorenz flicks the fingers of his free hand in a way he hopes translates as _one night stand._

“A few times. Especially after…”

Lorenz raises his eyebrows. “After?”

“The housewarming party,” Claude admits with a little grimace. “I figured, well, if you were moving on, I should as well. But nothing ever really seemed to stick.”

“I would hardly constitute Sylvain as _moving on_ ,” Lorenz says plainly. “A distraction, more like.”

Claude chews his bottom lip over a few times before asking, rather subdued, "Was he good to you?"

"I never asked him to be." Lorenz winces, briefly mortified by his own honesty. “What we had was short-term. On and off for a month or two before I finally ended it. I think… he was more interested in me than I was in him.”

“Who wouldn’t be interested?” Claude says staunchly. “You’re gorgeous. Also fuck him.”

Lorenz barks a laugh, startled into it. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like him.” Claude squeezes his hand, drawing his gaze. “You deserve to be treated kindly.”

The laughter drains away. Lorenz presses his lips together, mulling over his words before admitting, "I couldn't let him be anything like you. That was the whole point. And he was happy to… To push me around a little. When I asked."

Claude lifts his eyebrows. “Is that what you like? To be _pushed around_?”

“Maybe on occasion,” Lorenz mumbles. “Not all the time.”

Claude’s thumb kisses the backs of his knuckles. “I can work with that.”

Lorenz swallows ineffectually, his mouth suddenly dry as dust. He can’t think about that right now. Can’t think about _work with that_ , casual and easy, like sex is something that can just _happen_ , now.

“So,” he says weakly. “Now what?”

“Hmm. Well our boat seems to still be afloat, against all odds. Wouldn’t you say?”

“So it would seem.”

“I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a bit… raw, from all of that. I am not opposed to taking things slow. Generally speaking.”

Lorenz nods quickly. “I—yes, that sounds preferable. I admit part of me is still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Probably will _be_ waiting for… a little while.”

“That’s all right. We can ease into it.”

They sit quietly together for a few minutes before, until the flush of shame and terror and embarrassment and relief finally bleeds away and leaves Lorenz shivering. Claude is the one to suggest they go back inside, and Lorenz agrees, though he’s quietly reluctant to let go for Claude’s hand.

Upstairs, the kitchen is exactly as he’d left it. Clippers quiet on the countertop, still plugged in next to the toaster; dark clumps of hair scattered in piles beneath the chair; the broom propped against the counter, waiting to be used. Claude takes hold of this last, despite Lorenz’s protests, and sweeps the shorn hair into the garbage while Lorenz cleans the clippers and puts away the chair. Then, these little rituals complete, they stand quietly in the kitchen and look at one another, each one waiting for the other to move first.

“I should shower,” Claude says at last. He keeps rubbing the back of his neck, and Lorenz isn’t sure whether it’s bashfulness, or the prickly itch of loose hair distracting him. “Get all this off me.”

“Yes,” Lorenz says, stepping closer. “You should.”

There’s something about seeing Claude like this, quiet and rosy-cheeked and unsure, that wedges open the door of Lorenz’s forebearance and flings it wide open to the sun. _Slow_ , he reminds himself, as he moves toe to toe with Claude, as he lifts a hand to lay against his cheek. _Slow_ , as Claude’s hands move to his waist, warm and proprietary. _Slow_ —like the movement of their lips against each other, like the breaths Lorenz breathes through his nose as he opens his mouth to let Claude inside.

He doesn’t realize he’s being backed against the counter until he bumps into it and Claude’s body moves flush with his. He moans against Claude’s mouth, arching his hips—

“Okay,” Claude mumbles, kissing his cheek, his jaw, down the slope of his neck. “Okay. Easy… slow… we’re in no rush.”

“Who are you trying to convince?” Lorenz asks breathlessly. His hands, tangled in Claude’s hair, trail down his nape and clutch at his shoulders as Claude licks his throat, rubbing his stubble against tender skin. Staking his claim. “Me or you?”

“A little of both,” he admits. He draws away after sucking a mark to the side of Lorenz’s neck, lips pink and wet, eyes dark. “Sorry, that was… I’ve been waiting to do that for so long.”

“Almost three years?” Lorenz asks archly, and drags him back in.

They kiss in the kitchen interminably. By silent agreement they keep their hands above the waist, but it’s a paltry boundary, especially when Claude pets his fingertips beneath Lorenz’s shirt at the base of his spine, or when Lorenz spreads his hands over Claude’s chest to feel up his pectorals.

Eventually the heady throb of blood between his legs begins to mellow, perhaps realizing that there won’t be any of _that_ sort of action happening today, and their kisses slow and soften, easing back until they’re just pecking one another’s lips, noses brushing and hands burrowed into clothing.

“Okay,” Claude sighs at last, leaning his forehead on Lorenz’s shoulder. “ _Now_ I’m going to take a shower.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask whether Claude wants company—or whether he’ll be partaking in any interesting activities while alone in the bathroom—but Lorenz restrains himself. _Slow_ , he tells himself, and watches Claude’s ass on its way out of the kitchen.

He glances down the front of his body. His leggings do very little to conceal the half-chub sitting in his underwear, particularly when he cups his palm against it, letting the girth fill the crook of his thumb. He bites his lip, rubbing just to watch himself grow. Heat prickles under his shirt and he groan softly, squeezing his heft, petting to mold the curve of it sideways across his hip.

 _You should stop,_ he tells himself, even as he slips his hand inside his leggings. His skin is hot and damp with sweat, and when he pinches the head lightly, fluid beads against his fingertips. Heat throbs in his groin, aches in his head. _Slow down. Easy…_

He hears a soft cry from the other side of the apartment suddenly, even over the hiss of water on tile as the shower runs in the bathroom. He snatches his hand from his clothes and moves on wobbly legs through the living room. _Just to make sure he’s okay_ , he thinks, even as he places a hand on the bathroom door. Bracing.

He gathers himself to call Claude’s name and nearly swallows his own tongue. Claude is whimpering steadily now, silky-soft, hardly dampened at all by the sound of the shower. Lorenz squeezes his eyes shut and rests his forehead against the door. He can’t see, but he can envision Claude with his head tipped back beneath the spray, legs spread as he rubs himself off with his hand—or maybe he’s fingering himself, two fingers deep, fucking himself and thinking of Lorenz as he takes the edge off.

Lorenz realizes he’s touching himself again, and this time he doesn’t bother to stop. On the other side of the door, Claude’s noises grow tighter and higher and closer together, until suddenly he explodes with a quick staccato of _fuckfuckfuck oh god oh fuck—_

And then silence. Any heavy breathing, any lingering sounds are absorbed by the sound of the shower, and the sound of Lorenz’s own heartbeat in his ears. His dick throbs in his leggings, begging for attention. Lorenz takes a deep breath.

The water shuts off. Like a shock of electricity to his system, Lorenz floods with shame and embarrassment, moving swiftly away from the door. He hadn’t _meant_ to listen in, it had just _happened_ —

He’s only got as far as putting one foot on the bottom stair when the door opens. His eyes peel off in that direction, despite his best efforts, and he freezes where he stands. Claude is holding a towel around his waist but he’s naked otherwise, hair wet and dripping over his forehead, the hair on his chest and belly dark with water, dragged by the shower’s current into a downward trajectory. Lorenz can’t look away.

“Hey,” Claude says at last, voice rough around the edges. “Um. Shower’s yours, if you want it.”

Only the grace of the stairs saves him from exposing his boner to the room at large—the idea of walking _past Claude_ with his cock trying to bore a hole through his leggings is untenable. “That’s all right,” he manages to say, “I was just going to change for bed.”

Claude’s eyebrows lift. “It’s three in the afternoon.”

“Yes, well.” His eyes fasten on a bead of water working its way through the hair on his chest toward one reddish-brown nipple, and he wonders if it’s possible to pass out from arousal. “I just wanted to change, that’s all. I’ll be quick.”

He nips up the stairs before Claude can call him back, hot in the face. _Change for bed? You idiot_. Lorenz doesn’t wear traditional pajamas, as a rule, and Claude knows it; it feels excessive, when he already has so little space to store his clothes. So he pulls his shirt off and kicks out of his leggings, and then stands in front of his wardrobe for far longer than promised, trying to figure out what he’s doing here.

“Hey,” Claude says gently from somewhere behind him. “Sorry to intrude, I just…”

“It’s all right.” Lorenz hunches a bit, practically burying his face in his rack of button downs. “Um.”

“Are you okay?”

Lorenz can hear him patting himself dry with the towel before tossing it onto the railing with a _schlump_ of wet, heavy fabric. Just knowing he’s stark naked sends desire spiraling through him like punch-drunk fireflies, frantically beating their wings against the cage of his frail, fleshy body. “I’m fine,” he squeaks. His erection has calmed a little, but he’s still not exactly soft, and his dark heather-grey boxer briefs are snug and leave little to the imagination. Turning around is untenable, especially if Claude is still—

A warm hand touches his spine, well north of his waistband. “You don’t seem fine,” Claude says. “Is this okay?”

The touching, he must mean. Lorenz jerks a nod, and Claude’s left hand trails sideways to grip his hip, mirrored on the other side with his right. A moment later there’s a soft, slightly coarse pressure deposited between his shoulder blades: a kiss, rough around the edges with stubble. Lorenz shivers, lightning-quick, swift as a star streaking across an inky sky.

“I’m sorry,” Lorenz blurts out before Claude can do or say anything more.

“For what, love?”

He swallows, squirms, curls his toes against the bare pine floorboards. “I… I overheard you. In the shower.”

“Oh, darling, I was rather hoping you would.” Claude’s thumbs massage his back, soothing him like a skittish animal. Incredibly, it’s working. Lorenz’s spine unravels and his breaths come easier in his chest as Claude continues: “I’m sorry for teasing you, or if I stressed you out. I’m… I wanted to take the edge off, and I thought maybe… you would, too?”

Lorenz bites his lip. His prick is stirring again, as eager as before, undaunted by the repeated withdrawals; his tongue feels heavy in his mouth. He nods again, too fluttery-frantic-anxious to speak.

“Hey,” Claude says again, softly. “Turn around and look at me?”

It’s a request, not a demand, but it tugs at some internal place deep within his chest, almost drawing him around by force even though Claude’s hands never push or control him. When he turns, Claude is standing naked in front of him—too close to make out any details below the waist, but Lorenz blushes anyway and drops his gaze to the floor.

“What do you want?” Claude asks.

 _To kiss you_ , he thinks instantly, before more thoughts come, tumbling over themselves in their eagerness to be heard. _To fuck you, and to be fucked by you, and learn how to please you with my hands and my mouth and all of me—_

“You,” he blurts out before Claude grows impatient and asks again. “Just you.”

“What do you think?” Claude murmurs. “To hell with slow?”

Lorenz’s breath catches on a laugh and he leans his brow against Claude’s. “Yes. That sounds nice.”

Claude laughs, catches his face up in his hands and kisses him. This time when they lean together there is nothing between them but Lorenz’s briefs. The feel of his body, warm and soft and coarse with hair, bony in places where the stringy, energetic boy still runs and laughs beneath the skin—it’s effervescent. Lorenz feels stupid for thinking it, or would, except that his hands are trailing down Claude’s chest and stomach, and Claude’s teeth are sharp and smiling against his collarbone. And he is happy.

The bed is right there, so they fall into it, laughing. Claude is unafraid of his own nudity, but he pulls the sheets up to his chin anyway, then giggles his way out of them again as Lorenz burrows up against his side, hands devouring every inch. They kiss, and kiss, and kiss. Lorenz sighs and moans with it, freely—Claude makes it easy. He praises him so readily, tells him how wonderful he is, how beautiful.

With the sheets pulled up over their heads, late afternoon daylight spilling cool and white through the fibers, Claude leans down and breathes against his lips: “Will you let me be good to you?”

Lorenz nods. He reaches up and tangles his fingers in Claude’s messy hair. Claude grins at him, kisses him when he tugs him down, thumb sharp as a live wire against his nipple. “Please,” Lorenz mumbles, half out of his mind, tongue half out of his mouth and inside Claude’s. When he rocks his hips up he meets thin air, and then a strong thigh between his own, knee braced against the mattress. “ _Please_.”

Claude wiggles down, down until his feet poke out the other end of the bedding and his head is between Lorenz’s thighs. His mouth is soft and wet as it licks his belly, following his happy trail to his cock. The delicate pressure is almost too much. Lorenz’s entire body seizes up, legs tensing, fingers coiled in the sheets. Between his legs, the linens bunched around his shoulders like crumpled wings, Claude watches him and slides his mouth down onto his cock.

He doesn’t last very long. He feels like he’s been strung out on the edge for eons, until every crystalline fragment of his body is ready to shatter. When he breaks, Claude cradles him through it. Strong hands hold his hips down, pinning him to the mattress, and a hot mouth bleeds him dry, snug around his cock, sucking him down until he has nothing left to give.

Lorenz is mostly silent through the process, save for a few whimpering cries at the end, when even the softest touch of Claude’s tongue is too much. Then he quiets, soothed by soft kisses to his hipbones.

Slightly out of breath, lips stained cherry-red, Claude levers himself up onto his elbows and crawls back up the bed to kiss his mouth. Lorenz feels drunk, or high, or some other sort of altered state where up is down and sideways is nowhere at all. He drifts, tethered to reality only by the salt-bitter taste of Claude’s tongue, the slow sweeps of his hands as Claude strokes his arms and chest.

“Are you all right?” Claude murmurs some time later. The room has grown a little darker, not with evening but with clouds. Lorenz can see them through the skylights overhead, ominous and heavy with rain. Ready to burst.

“Wonderful,” he rasps. He reaches for Claude, winding him close, kissing his lips, his stubbled cheek. “Can I… are you…?”

“I’m all right for now. I got off in the shower.” Claude grins at the admission, bashful. “Sorry.”

“Mmmh. Don’t apologize,” Lorenz mumbles into the crook of his neck. “I’m just… sorry I missed it. Missed seeing it.”

Claude kisses the top of his head and lays quietly, tangled with him under the sheets. Against the skylights, the first patter of rain begins to fall. It begins slowly, just a hush against the glass; then it picks up in earnest, drumming on the roof and sighing against the windows as the wind carries it in great gusts through the streets. Lorenz half-listens to it as they kiss. The sound lulls him, trailing down his spine like Claude’s hand, raising the fine hairs at the back of his neck with its whisper.

“I love you,” he says against Claude’s lips. His voice is almost swallowed up by the rain, by Claude’s tongue licking into his mouth.

Claude pulls away, braced on one elbow to look at him. His hand trails through Lorenz’s hair, thumb soft on his cheek, eyes a deep mossy green that’s nearly gray. As dark and deep as a mountain lake. “I love hearing you say that,” he whispers. “I was so terrified of it, once, and now it’s the only thing I want to hear.”

Lorenz blushes. “That can be arranged.”

Claude grins and boosts himself up suddenly, sitting astride Lorenz’s waist. Lorenz swallows at the feel of his warm, wet core against his lower belly. His own briefs were discarded some time ago, tangled at the foot of the bed no doubt, and his cock stirs against his thigh, undaunted by their earlier activities.

“I don’t know about you,” Claude says, weaving their fingers together on his thighs, “but I think quarantine just got a whole lot more bearable.”

Lorenz snorts, but doesn’t push him off when Claude leans down to kiss him. The motion already feels so natural. Like they’ve been doing it all along. He tries to remember even a flicker of that pain, the bitterness he’d struggled to purge from his heart for years, and it’s nowhere to be found. Claude’s tenderness, his affection, his body—they’ve chased it away, erased all the time he wasted feeling sorry for himself. Wishing for something he thought he’d never have.

He’s nearly tonsil deep in Claude’s mouth when the first clap of thunder rolls across the sky. Claude jerks back, eyes flashing white in his face with surprise.

“Oh,” he says, as casually as if they’re standing in the kitchen together. His ass has bumped up against the head of Lorenz’s cock, which is now straining and hard, smudging a bit of precum wherever it grazes Claude’s skin. “Hello there.”

“Sorry,” Lorenz begins, and catches his breath as Claude curls his fingers around the head and gives it a slow pump. “Nnh—Claude…”

“Need a hand?” He laughs at his own joke and lifts up, walking back on his knees until he’s straddling Lorenz’s thighs instead of his waist. The new position lets him jerk Lorenz off slowly right between his thighs, thump swiping the head on the upstroke. Lorenz shivers and tries to lift his hips, but Claude’s weight has him pinned.

“Please,” he whispers, and stops, too embarrassed to ask.

“Please what, sweetheart?” Without waiting for an answer, Claude spits into his hand and the next slide of his palm around his cock is a little less dry. “Have any slick, darling?”

“I… yes… in the side table.” Blushing, Lorenz watches him stretch across the mattress to fumble in the nightstand. He’s so unfairly handsome—even the flex of his thigh, the curl of hair under his arm, makes his mouth dry. Makes him _want._

“Aha!” Claude crows in victory. He settles back on his heels with a bottle of lube and a condom wrapper, the latter of which he promptly peels open with his teeth. Lorenz’s belly swoops.

“Claude—”

“Mm? This okay, love?”

 _Love_. Lorenz takes an unsteady breath and nods. “Just—maybe check the expiration date.”

Claude laughs a little, but does as he’s told, squinting at the torn foil packet. “June 2022. We’re good.” He dribbles a bit of lube onto the palm of his hand and runs it up and down Lorenz’s cock in slow, luxuriant strokes. The difference is extraordinary—Lorenz jerks into it, nearly unseating him, and Claude laughs again, delighted. “Liked that, huh? Feels good?”

Lorenz nods helplessly against the pillow, shivering as Claude slides the condom on in one practiced motion. “Is that… are we…”

Claude chucks the wrapper on the ground and the lube to the mattress—terrible manners, Lorenz will have to remember to chide him for it later—and punts himself forward like an expert diver, elbows first onto the mattress to either side of Lorenz’s head, lips to his cheek. “I thought,” he murmurs, leaning back so Lorenz can admire his bright jewel-green eyes, “I might sit on your cock, if that’s all right with you.”

He chokes, grabs for Claude’s arms to hold himself steady. “Yes. Very much all right.”

“Good.” Claude kisses him, teasing a dry thumb along the cut of his jaw. He opens Lorenz’s mouth with his own, licks inside, and when he reaches back to hold his cock steady and tease it at his entrance, Lorenz thinks he might faint from forgetting to breathe. Then: “Breathe,” Claude whispers, smiling. “Say when.”

Lorenz sucks in a deep breath and tries to relax his grip on Claude’s biceps. “When…?”

“When you’re ready.”

Lorenz can’t help the small hiccuping laugh that escapes. “I’ll never be ready—I’m sure to embarrass myself as soon as you do it, I just—I want it, Claude, please—”

At the _please_ , Claude’s glittering eyes narrow with focus. Lorenz only has a moment to gulp another breath in preparation before Claude is sinking down onto his cock, enveloping him in snug wet heat. Lorenz keens, trying to turn his face into the pillow; but Claude catches his chin, kisses his damp lower lip, the corner of his mouth, whispering soft praises and groans of pleasure as he eases down fully.

“Fuck, darling,” he murmurs, thumb to cheekbone. “You feel incredible.”

“You’re—one to talk,” Lorenz gasps. He lets his hands trail down Claude’s sides, culminating at the fulcrum of his hips where he moves like a dancer; back, forward, up, sideways, a shifting sea of motion that Lorenz can’t possibly hope to follow. His earlier orgasm is the only reason he hasn’t come already, and even that safety net is wearing thin. He digs his thumbs into the softness at Claude’s waist and tries to hang on.

 _Ka-BOOM._ Thunder rolls directly overhead, so loud it slams against his eardrums like a gong. Claude startles in his lap and then chortles at his own surprise. “Fuck! It must be right overhead—”

A split of brilliant light spasms across the sky as if summoned by his words. Lorenz holds his breath, eyes wide in the dark. He remembers, suddenly, lying in pitch-black beneath the heavy antique quilt on Claude’s bed in his grandfather’s cabin, side by side as a thunderstorm raged overhead. The power had already gone out, but it was so late they simply dove into bed, scaring themselves silly with ghost stories and the raging storm.

How impossibly different this is. The next bark of thunder shivers through him like the heat Claude kindles under his skin, rippling through him faster and faster with each motion. Undaunted by the storm’s fury, Claude rides him like Lorenz is a thoroughbred and Claude is racing for the Triple Crown, like he’s racing the thunder itself for the grand finale.

“Claude,” he chokes, focusing on the way his curls bounce and wave atop his head, on the flash of his teeth whenever the light catches on his glowing face just so. His fingers cling and scrabble, and Claude clings back, planting Lorenz’s hands on the mattress above his head. Exposed, laid bare, Lorenz arches his back and finds release.

“There you are,” Claude pants. His hips don’t slow even an inch, wringing Lorenz’s orgasm out of him until he’s sobbing for breath, for mercy. “You’re lovely. Oh, god—”

Through heavy-lidded eyes, Lorenz watches Claude’s face crease with pleasure, mouth open, breath sucked from his lungs as another crackle of lightning illuminates the room. This, at last, drags his metronomic rhythm out of step. His hips stutter, then slow, then stop, and Lorenz can feel his body clenching around him so hard it nearly sends him crosseyed.

“Beautiful,” Lorenz whispers without quite meaning to. Claude moans at the praise, tightens again; he seems to grind in place, fully seated on Lorenz’s dick, coaxing a few more oversensitive tremors out of himself like the fading growl of distant thunder.

“Fuck.” Claude bows his chin against his chest, and Lorenz eases him down, hands in his sweaty hair. Claude nuzzles readily beneath his chin with a hum. “Mmmmmmm. So good.”

Lorenz watches another flicker of lightning shudder against the ceiling and tries to summon thought. It’s a difficult prospect. The bulk of the storm seems to have passed them by, but the rain still drizzles steadily against the skylights, and despite Claude’s weight burrowing him deeper into the bed, he feels as though he’s gathering all the little thousands of pieces Claude threw to the four winds, trying to stitch them back into some semblance of human.

“Well,” Claude murmurs after a little while. He props himself up on one elbow, looking down at Lorenz. His expression is reserved, or else just hard to read in the low light, but a trace of fondness bleeds through as he brushes a strand of hair from Lorenz’s cheek. “How was that? Did it live up to your…”

“Don’t,” Lorenz interrupts, blushing. Still raw and exposed in the aftermath, he’s afraid that the slightest poke against that old wound will set him off, and he doesn’t really want to be the sort of person who cries after sex.

“All right.” Reticent, Claude withdraws his hand, only for Lorenz to catch it up and press it to his lips.

“The answer is yes,” he whispers, “it did. But I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” Claude’s thumb traces a path beneath the hollow of his eye, tender. “Okay.”

Lorenz closes his eyes and turns his face into Claude’s palm. “I should do something about this condom, I think.”

“Ha! Yes, probably. Would you like me to…?”

“God, no, I wouldn’t subject you to that.” Crinkling his nose, Lorenz drags himself away and swings his legs over the side of the bed, putting his back to Claude in order to perform the unfortunate ritual of removing the used condom and tying the end up. Better than making a mess, he supposes, but he still can’t help the moue of distaste he wears as he disposes of it in the wastebasket and pats himself dry with Claude’s used towel.

When he turns around again, Claude is sprawled luxuriously across the bed, arms and legs spreadeagled, mouth smug and smiling. That smile draws him in, hook, line, and sinker. Lorenz settles on the edge of the bed and kisses it off him, thrilled at how easy it is. How uncomplicated.

“Hey,” Claude murmurs against his mouth.

“Hmm?”

“I should, er, run to the bathroom.” He pecks Lorenz on the cheek and slips past him out of bed, quick as an eel. “Keep the bed warm for me, baby.”

 _Baby._ Lorenz feels a funny swoop in his belly at the pet name, and curls up readily in the warm spot Claude left behind, scooping his arms beneath the pillow to cradle it against his cheek. The rain patters on, endless. Unaware of the monumental thing that has just transpired beneath it.

Claude returns after only a few minutes, sliding between the sheets to plaster himself to Lorenz’s back. Their “spots” have been reversed, but Lorenz doesn’t mind. It just means he gets to lay his cheek on Claude’s pillow, breathing him in even as the man himself breathes against his spine, skin to skin and heartbeats growing slow in sync.

* * *

He wakes in bed alone, but he doesn’t _feel_ alone. Sunlight spills warmly over him, and he can smell something sweet rising from the kitchen. Butter and cinnamon and cardamom. Lorenz rolls over onto his back and looks up through the skylights to a brilliant blue, so blue it takes his breath away.

The weight that’s been sitting on his chest for so long is gone. He rubs his sternum with one hand, musing, enjoying the slight ache in his hips and his shoulders where Claude had strained the limits of his flexibility. And then he blushes. _We had sex last night. Claude… fucked me last night._

His stomach rumbles, distracting him from his shellshocked musings, but before he can drag himself out of bed to inquire after breakfast, he hears soft footsteps on the stairs. He lays back down and lets his eyes shut, strangely nervous. But Claude is very light-footed, when he wants to be; Lorenz can scarcely hear him, only feels the whisper of a draft in response to his movement, smells the bright grassy notes of tea and the heavier spicy-sweet smell of pastries… cinnamon buns? His mouth waters, and he opens his eyes.

Claude is sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him. He flinches a little at being caught, but relaxes again with a self-conscious little laugh and reaches out to touch his cheek. “Hey. Sorry if I woke you.”

“You didn’t,” Lorenz whispers through a dry throat. “I was faking.”

Claude laughs in earnest, leaning down to kiss him despite Lorenz’s protests of morning breath. “I thought you might be. I tried to be quiet while I was cooking, but it’s fucking harder than it seems.” He glances to the side, and when Lorenz turns his head on the pillow to follow his gaze, he sees a tray wedged carefully onto the limited real estate of his bedside stand, complete with two mugs—one for coffee, one for tea—and a plate loaded with…

“Croissants?”

“Rugelach,” Claude corrects, smiling. “Awful lot easier, and more delicious—if I do say so myself. I haven’t quite mastered the croissant, yet.”

“It’s only a matter of time, I’m sure.” Lorenz pushes himself upright and leans in for another kiss, a proper one this time, with tongue. Claude doesn’t complain about morning breath, so he doesn’t either, and after a minute it doesn’t matter anyway. When he pulls back, the wet smack of their lips feels obscenely loud in the morning quiet. “You can achieve anything you set your mind to.”

To his surprise, Claude _blushes_. “Baking isn’t my strong suit,” he demurs, “but as long as it comes out tasting all right, that’s what matters.”

“You’re too experimental,” Lorenz says, leaning back against the pillows. He watches Claude rise and circle the end of the bed to climb into his proper place, admiring the way his shirt rides up to expose the blunt curve of his hip. “I’ve watched you cook. You throw things hither and yon, sprinkle bits of this and that—you refuse to measure _anything_ —”

“Hey, hey!” Claude laughs, sliding up against him to plant a wet, noisy kiss on his cheek. “What happened to the praise?”

“It’s not a criticism,” Lorenz says with genuine surprise. “Simply an observation. Baking is much more precise than cooking.”

“Mmhmm. I didn’t know you were a pastry chef, Mr. Gloucester.”

“I’m not,” Lorenz admits, “I just watch a lot of Bake Off.”

Claude laughs at him while he settles the tray over their laps, but settles down to pluck his coffee from its saucer and watch Lorenz keenly as he retrieves his tea. “I hope I got the proportions right. I’ve been watching you make it long enough.”

Lorenz takes a delicate sip and hums approvingly. “Perfect.”

“Good. Maybe not the best flavor pairing with rugelach but.” He shrugs. “I hope you like it anyway.”

“You made it,” Lorenz observes, “so I’m sure I shall.”

The pastry, of course, is delicious; crumbly and warm, filled with nuts and a rich cinnamon-cardamom-sugar mixture that melts on the tongue. Lorenz eats two and then subsides against Claude’s shoulder, savoring the warmth of his body as he talks about learning to bake them from a little old Polish lady who lived down the street from his grandfather.

“She was a weaver. Made the most beautiful rugs. She could have set up an online shop and sold them, but she didn’t want to; her husband left her a massive inheritance when he passed, so she would give the damn things away, unless they were commissions. Granddad has at least three in his house. Anyway, she taught me most of the pastries and breads I know. This is her recipe, adapted slightly, since we didn’t have cream cheese.”

Lorenz peers at him over the rim of his cup. “Aren’t you lactose intolerant?”

“A minor detail.” Claude leans in again, kissing a crumb from the corner of his mouth. “Hey.”

“Hmm?”

Claude rests his nose against his cheek. “I love you.”

Lorenz sucks in a weak breath. “Not fair.”

“What isn’t?”

“That you can lay me out with just a few words.” He sniffs. “It’s far too much power.”

“I’ll use it sparingly, then,” Claude teases gently. He downs the last of his coffee and sets it aside, wrapping his arm around Lorenz’s shoulders. “I was feeling nostalgic this morning, actually, because Granddad called.”

Lorenz blinks. “He did?”

“Yeah, it’s why I was out of bed so early. I didn’t want to disturb you.” A broad hand strokes through his hair, long gentle sweeps that has Lorenz struggling to hold back a yawn. “He’s doing well. Spent some time in the mountains doing maintenance-y things. I yelled at him, because he’s not supposed to be straining himself, but he insisted he was fine. And, um. He said the cabin is all ready, if we want to use it.”

“ _We_?” Lorenz echoes, unsure of what he’s saying.

“Well, I. But you could come too, if you wanted. Get out of the city for a little while.”

Lorenz is familiar with Mr. von Riegan’s cabin. It's a fairly rustic endeavor on the outside, but sporting all the modern amenities: running water, electricity, several bedrooms and two full baths and a proper kitchen. And, most prized of all, an internet connection. He wouldn’t want to have video calls on it, but it would suffice for phonecalls and emails and order tracking.

“Are we… allowed?”

“Who’s going to prevent us?”

“I don’t know, I just… I’m worried. What if the city shuts down and we can’t get back?”

“I don’t think that’ll happen,” Claude soothes. “And if it does it won’t be permanent. We don’t have to go, it was just an idea.”

“You want a honeymoon,” Lorenz accuses without heat.

“Can you blame me? It would be even more socially distanced than we are right now, I’ll point out. We can pick up a boatload of groceries on the way and be set for _weeks_.”

“And you’ll be able to work from the cabin?”

Claude grimaces. “Well, I’d probably want to wait until the semester is over. No way am I lecturing on that shitty LAN connection.”

“So… another month?” Lorenz ventures. Despite his protestations, his heart sinks at the idea. A cozy cabin in the mountains, no matter how many conflicting memories it holds, is a great deal more appealing than spending god knows how long cramped in this box of an apartment.

“Two weeks of lectures,” Claude says, “and then a week for finals and grading and all that bullshit, which doesn’t require any more zoom calls, thank god. So we have some time to think about it.”

Lorenz sits up to look at him properly. “You keep saying _we_.”

“Yeah.” Claude looks back, a quizzical bent to his dark brows. “I mean I wouldn’t go alone, unless you got fed up and kicked me out, I suppose.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.” He smiles that crooked smile and chucks Lorenz gently under the chin. “Hey. I know this is kind of new, but. You and me, we’ve always been a package deal—now more than ever. I’m not leaving you behind.”

Lorenz is horrified to feel the telltale burn of unshed tears stinging his eyes, and he burrows against Claude’s chest before he can expose himself. “Okay,” he whispers. “Two weeks.”

“Hardly any time at all.” Claude holds him, kindly pretending not to notice Lorenz struggling to compose himself. “It’ll fly by. Especially now that I’m allowed to suck your co—”

“ _Claude_.”

“What! Aren’t I allowed?”

“Well… yes, but…”

“But what, love?”

Lorenz _harrumphs_. “You’re doing that on purpose.”

“Doing what, flattering you? Adoring you as you deserve?”

“Oh, shut up and kiss me, von Riegan.”

“Mmf! With pleasure.”

* * *

_three weeks later_

The spring peepers are out in force. The sun has hardly begun to fade behind the mountains when their shrill chorus begins, ringing across the lake from shallow to shallow as they scream their mating call for all to hear. Overhead the sky is a satiny blue, softened by dusk; against its smooth canvas, the spires of stately evergreens coalesce into a spiny crown that encircles their small private lake. The air smells of wet grass and cedar and woodsmoke, the latter safely contained in a metal ring whose insides are stained black from years of campfires.

Lorenz is standing at the sliding door bundled into one of Claude’s hoodies, letting it wash over him, when he feels the strong arms of his boyfriend wrap around his waist.

“Hey there.”

“Claude.” Lorenz tips his head back, smiling when a stubbly kiss is pressed just behind his ear. “Dishes are done.”

“I saw. Thank you.” He slips warm hands beneath the hem of Lorenz’s sweatshirt and holds him by the hips. “What do you think. S’mores tonight?”

“It’s too cold,” Lorenz pouts, even though he’s plenty warm in Claude’s hoodie and his own lined winter leggings.

“Aw, c’mon, baby. I built the fire up, it’ll be nice and cozy.” Another kiss, this one smeared along his neck. “You can sit on my lap if you’re cold.”

“Promise?” Lorenz says archly, and shrieks when Claude tickles his sides. “Claude!”

“Pinky swear!” He leaps out of the way to avoid a swat to the head and darts out into the chilly spring evening, laughter ringing out behind him like a bridal train through dew-wet grass.

Lorenz sighs, shoves his feet into the slightly too-big mud boots that Claude’s grandfather leaves here year round, and follows him out into the gloaming.

“Think we’ll see any shooting stars?” Claude asks some time later. The s’mores have been had, sticky and too-sweet and satisfying, and now they are cuddled up close together on the rough-hewn pine bench, Lorenz’s legs slung over Claude’s knee as they watch the fire work its way down to a glowing bed of coals. Lorenz hums and shoves his face further against Claude’s warm neck.

“Don’t know. Suppose we could lay out on the dock and find out.”

“I suppose so. What happened to being cold?”

“Hmm. You warmed me up.”

“My area of expertise.” Sounding pleased with himself, Claude coaxes Lorenz’s face up for a kiss. “C’mon, let’s go look.”

Lorenz groans a complaint as Claude wriggles free of his weight and strikes off down the slope for the dock. But as warm as the fire is, it’s not nearly the same without his boyfriend there to cuddle; so he levers himself upright, stretching his arms toward the heavens, and follows him down to the water’s edge.

The dock creaks slightly underfoot, but holds, leading them out over the glassy water. It’s well and truly dark now, so dark it’s almost frightening. Lorenz had forgotten how dark it gets, so far from civilization. A world of difference from the city that never sleeps.

“Claude,” he says, small-voiced, standing alone near the shore.

“I’m here.” A bright beam of light shines against the dock from Claude’s phone and he holds out his hand for Lorenz to take. “C’mon, the stars are insane.”

Lorenz takes his hand, warm and sure, and lets him lead the way out to the end of the dock.

Away from the slight glow of the campfire and the kitchen light spilling out over the patio, the sky leaps into stark relief, millions of stars contained within the coronet of trees. Lorenz tips his head back and traces them in his mind. Cassiopeia with her mirror, Cepheus striding ahead and the tail end of Persues just over her left shoulder. He’s a little surprised that he remembers them so clearly; in the city, there are no such thing as stars. Yet here the Milky Way is clear as day, a spill of glittering light like a carpet unrolled across the sky.

“Remember,” Claude whispers, “when we memorized the constellations?”

Lorenz does, vividly. Laid on their stomachs on the patio, poring over heavy old astronomy books that smelled of mothballs, scribbling star charts on sheets of perforated printer paper. He hums.

“I wish I remembered them. Any chance one of those is the Big Dipper?”

“Not yet. In the early morning we’ll see her, maybe.”

“Hmmm. I have a funny feeling we’ll be sleeping by then.” Claude loops his arm around Lorenz’s waist, tipping his head back against his shoulder. “Will you teach them to me? I bet Granddad’s old books are still in the attic. Maybe even our terrible replicas.”

“Of course I will. Happily.” Lorenz turns his face away from the sky to stretch out the ache in his neck. The lake is flat and perfectly black, reflecting the sky like a mirror of obsidian. As he admires it, a slight streak of light moves across the surface and disappears; at his side, Claude gasps and holds him tighter.

“Did you see that?”

“I thought it was my imagination,” Lorenz whispers, squinting once more at the sky. “Or a ripple on the water.”

“A single shooting star.” Claude hums and Lorenz can feel the reverb settle into him, all the way through his ribs to his heart. “Make a wish. Seal it with a kiss.”

Lorenz huffs, but he’s smiling. “You made that last part up.”

“So? Can’t hurt, can it?” Claude’s grip eases, changes as he shifts his weight to stand in front of him instead of at his side. Hands to hips, lips to jaw. Coaxing. “C’mere, love.”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” Lorenz mumbles, but he lets himself be drawn in, lets himself kiss and be kissed at the end of the dock with only the trees and the stars for company.

Absorbed in each other, neither one notices the second star that falls: a narrow lance of silver that parts the night-black curtain for a split second before disappearing, burnt up in the upper echelons of the atmosphere without leaving a trace.


End file.
